


Let's Be Alone Together

by AndreaAnEnigma



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Bending (Avatar TV), Azula (Avatar) Redemption, Bisexual Katara (Avatar), Bisexual Zuko (Avatar), Coronavirus AU, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Eventual Smut, F/M, Fluff, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Katara (Avatar) Needs a Hug, Past Child Abuse, Past Jet/Katara (Avatar), Past Jet/Zuko (Avatar), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, SO MUCH FLUFF, TW: non-graphic descriptions of self-harm, Zuko (Avatar) Needs a Hug, if i'm brave enough to try it, quarantine au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-27
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-12 11:54:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 32,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29010126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndreaAnEnigma/pseuds/AndreaAnEnigma
Summary: Katara needs a roommate after Sokka moves out, and Zuko needs a place to stay after disowning his awful family. Too bad they hate each other. When their friends force them to move in together, they're prepared to spend as little of their time in the apartment as possible—until a global pandemic and mandatory lockdown bring them closer than they ever expected.
Relationships: Katara/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 286
Kudos: 334





	1. invite me in

**Author's Note:**

> Hi friends! As promised, the quarantine au no one asked for but everyone (namely me) needed. Thinking about this AU has been a great break from the writing that this capitalist hellscape requires me to do in my professional life, so thank y'all for that. Prepare for TikTok shenanigans, Netflix marathons, accidental walk-ins, and more. Happy reading!
> 
> Thanks to @Lliyk for Zuko's last name! And fall out boy for the title of this fic and this chapter. I don't own ATLA or Fall Out Boy or Shinji Moon, either, just so we're clear.

I don't know where you're going, but  
do you got room for one more troubled soul?  
—fall out boy, "alone together"

What a shame that Katara’s favorite noodle spot had to be marred with such fuckery. 

“I’m not doing it.” She scowled and stabbed at the egg in her bowl, sinking it in broth. She sent a glare around the table at her best friends, who she was now considering evicting from her life after this mutinous ambush. “I don’t need a roommate. I’d rather start an OnlyFans.”

Sokka blanched, and so did Aang. Toph just grinned. Around a mouthful of dumpling, she said. “Wow, spicy Sweetness. I’ll subscribe. What about you, Warrior Queen?”

Suki raised her water glass to that, leaning back in her seat. “Seconded. You know I’m packing.” 

She patted at the Nike bag hanging from her chair, which held the metal fans she trained with at Madame Kyoshi’s MMA studio, and Katara grinned and gave her finger guns while Toph howled, scaring a group of frat boys who were passing their outdoor table to get into the restaurant.

Sokka’s head whipped around to glare at his girlfriend, his wolf-tail narrowly missing Aang’s face. “Why are you encouraging this?”

Suki shrugged innocently. “Your sister is hot. What can I say?”

Sokka squawked indignantly, his face flushing, and Aang stepped in, telling Katara, “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do, Katara. If you don’t want Zuko to move in—”

“I don’t—”

“Well, that’s too bad. I already told him he could,” Toph said, shrugging.

An angry flush rose to Katara’s face. “What?” she spat. “You gave the okay on him moving into _my_ apartment without my consent?”

Sokka frowned. “No, _I_ did. It’s _our_ apartment.”

“Um, not anymore, you traitor, since you decided to leave me hanging in the middle of the year to go live with your girlfriend.” Katara turned to Suki. “No offense.”

She shook her head, her short auburn hair swishing around her cheeks. “None taken. I told him to wait until the year was up, but he didn’t listen.”

Sokka glowered at her petulantly. “I don’t know why you’re not on my side here. You were there too. You can’t tell me you weren’t just as mortified as I was.”

Katara and Suki winced in tandem. Last week, Katara had walked in on Suki and Sokka in a very compromising position involving a bed covered in rose petals and a set of fuzzy blue handcuffs. “Okay, I’m not gonna lie. It would be really great if that would never happen again,” Katara relented. “But Zuko? How can _you_ be okay with this?”

She directed the question at Aang, pointing at him with her chopsticks. Aang flushed at her hard gaze and rubbed the back of his neck. “I told you. Zuko and I talked it out. He apologized. He’s a different person than he was at the beginning of this year.”

Aang and Zuko had had a class together at the beginning of the year—Morals of Economics—and they’d both been the best students in the class with wildly different opinions, probably because the Fire Nation had absolutely _obliterated_ the Air Nation one hundred years ago and they’d been rebuilding ever since. This awful piece of history linking them meant they were at each other’s throats constantly until the last three weeks of class, when they’d been forced to do a project on the collaboration between the Air Nomads and the Fire Nation had led to the development of one of the most successful clean energy sources in the history of the world. “Getting an A on a final project doesn’t automatically make up for being the son of the worst Fire Nation president in history.”

“Ex-president, thank fuck,” Toph said, and they all nodded, thinking of the impeachment proceedings that had come to a close last week. “Besides, you can’t help who your parents are. I would know.”

Katara wavered, knowing that Lao and Poppy Beifong were a sore subject with Toph. “Fine. That’s fair. I still don’t like him.”

“He really is different,” Suki offered, popping a handful of edamame into her mouth. “He’s not nearly as grumpy around the studio anymore, and he actually starts conversations now instead of me having to drag complete sentences out of him.”

Katara gave Suki a baleful look for betraying her, and Suki gave her a soft smile and a shrug. 

Of course she couldn’t have expected the martial arts instructor to be objective about this. After all, it was Zuko who had introduced her to Sokka, since Zuko had been training at Madame Kyoshi’s when Sokka had met him in a mechanical engineering class. Sokka had dropped by to meet Zuko for lunch when he was a senior, and when he laid eyes on Suki, beating the shit out of a guy a full head taller than her and weighing two times as much, he was gone. They’d been together ever since.

Lucky bastards.

“I agree with Warrior Queen,” Toph said, jerking a thumb in her general direction. “Therapy is really working for him.”

Katara rolled her eyes. “Yeah, not being a total dick to people is totally indicative of a personality change. Maybe we should give him a not-as-much-of-a-jerk-as-you-could-have-been award along with the keys to the apartment.” 

“Seriously, sis?” Sokka groaned. “I don’t know what the deal is between you two. I thought you bonded when you got stuck in the elevator during that campus blackout in November.”

Katara flushed, remembering Zuko’s face lit up by their phone flashlights, the way she’d opened up to him and her to her only for nothing to have changed when they finally got out, him going back to his sister Azula’s little gang of underlings and proceeding to ignore her until he and Aang finally made peace with each other at the end of last semester. “There is no deal. His family almost destroyed our tribe. We just can’t trust a Sozin, no matter how much you think they’ve changed.”

“Rokura,” Toph piped up.

Katara’s head swiveled around to look at her. “What?”

“Rokura,” Toph repeated, crossing her arms over her chest. “He changed his last name to his mom’s. That’s why he needs a place to live. He told his dad off when Ozai said he was going to fight back against the impeachment, told him about the name change, and basically disowned the family.”

Katara froze. A Sozin leaving the family name was unheard of. None of them would dare to part with the oil company money, or the power that came with it. “So he’s…”

“Cut off. Yeah. I don’t know how he did it either.” Somehow, Toph’s cloudy unseeing eyes were pointed straight at her as she frowned. “His uncle doesn’t have the room to take him in, and he doesn’t make nearly enough money at the tea shop to afford his own place. Face it, Sugar Queen: you need a roommate, and he needs a place to stay, and I don’t think you wanna share a bathroom with some rando.”

Katara scowled. As much as she hated to admit it, the little hellion was right. Katara didn’t make nearly as much money from her student job at the medical library as she’d need to cover the entire rent, and she couldn’t help but be irritated at Toph, the daughter of literal millionaires in Gaoling, for pointing it out. 

“You probably won’t even see him that much,” Suki pointed out. “He has classes and so do you. You both work too much. You’ll probably just be in the apartment to sleep.”

That didn’t make her feel much better, since she kept weird sleeping hours anyway, so she glanced around at everyone else to see if they’d offer any other solutions. “So you’re all okay with this?”

Aang gave her a sad smile. “I’d move in with you if I didn’t have Monk Gyatso to worry about.”

“No, it’s okay. You shouldn’t leave him alone.” Secretly, she was glad he had his guardian to think about. She didn’t know how she’d feel living under the same roof as her ex-boyfriend, even if he was still one of her best friends.

Still uncertain but running out of options, she asked the table, “Are you sure he’s changed?”

They all looked around at each other—Toph twisting her head to point her ears in all directions—and a look seemed to pass between them all before Sokka spoke. “Look, Katara, I’ve known you for twenty-one years. You’re not going to believe us unless you see it for yourself. All I’m asking is for you to give it a chance. Give him a chance.”

Katara tipped her head up to the sunny March sky for help and gave a world-weary sigh. “Fine. Zuko can move in. But I’m not going to like it, and I am _not_ helping him with his stuff.”

+++

Zuko was not looking forward to the prospect of living with a girl who hated him—and rightfully so—but it was better than sleeping in the back room of the Jasmine Dragon or Uncle Iroh’s couch, so he’d take possibly being murdered in his sleep over homelessness any day. The devil you know and all that.

“Up and at 'em, Sparky!” Toph boomed as she threw the door to the apartment lobby open, waving her cane with a flourish.

Zuko swiftly moved out of the way and rolled his eyes at the grin on her face that told him she’d known exactly how close he was to it. “Careful. You’re going to get us kicked out.” 

He tossed a wary glance at the doormen, who hadn’t even bothered to feign politeness now that Zuko was leaving.

He shifted the last box of CDs and books in his arms, adjusting his backpack on his shoulder and using the opportunity to glance back at the elevator behind him. Despite the fact that he’d left while Azula was in the shower, he half-expected his little sister to come flying down from their penthouse apartment, propelled by nothing but adrenaline and spite, as she came to berate him one last time for “betraying” her.

As if leaving was his choice. As if their father had given either of them a choice in the way they’d lived their lives. As if leaving the family because he hated himself too much to bear the thought of staying was his choice. 

The only thing more impossible than leaving was staying, and that was why he was currently cramming everything he owned into the back of his black Camaro and pulling out of the parking lot of the building he’d lived in for the last five years. He didn’t have a chance to see if he had even a shred of sentimentality for the cold building because Toph was busy roasting him. “Ya know, it’s pretty pathetic that all your life’s possessions can fit into your oldass muscle car.”

They started on the drive to the Middle Ring. Toph kicked her feet up and put them on the dashboard, and he glared at them. “Feet off the dash. We’re lucky it hasn’t left us on the side of the road. Show some respect.”

She gave a shit-eating grin and tapped her heels on it before pulling them off. “Whatever, grandpa. Anyway, for a rich kid, you have way too little stuff. You should’ve made the most of that Sozin money before you left. They owe you for it.”

Zuko had piled everything up in the trunk and a few boxes in the backseat that barely left any room for him to look back, which he would’ve taken as some kind of metaphor if not for the fact that he was so paranoid of getting into an accident from not being able to see out his back window. “I didn’t want anything else from them. I got my degree and I somehow managed to get this car in my name, thank fucking Agni. I don’t need anything else. I don’t want to owe them anything.”

His phone rang in the cupholder, and he glanced down at it as they came to a red light. Azula. He reached out and silenced it quickly, peeking at Toph to see if she noticed.

As usual, her eerily accurate perception had picked up on something because her cloudy eyes turned to him, serious under overgrown black bangs. “Your sister?”

“How do you do that? Are you even actually blind?” Zuko asked, hoping to distract her from further questions.

Toph grinned, waving a hand wildly in front of her unseeing eyes, a huge maniacal grin on her face. “Nope, this is all just one big hustle, my greatest yet.” 

“I thought you got banned from gambling on campus after that frat party where you conned the lacrosse team out of three thousand dollars. ”

“Let’s see them trying to expel the poor helpless blind girl.”

Zuko guffawed at that. “Anyone accusing you of being helpless would get a face full of fist and you know it. I still have the scar from that first time I tried to help you down the stairs fifteen years ago.”

Toph sat back in her seat, blowing her hair out of her face with a proud look on her face. “Ah, one of my finest hits yet. Sorry about your chin by the way.”

“No, you’re not.”

“You’re right, I’m not.” Toph paused for a moment before asking, “Seriously though. Rich kid to formerly rich kid, I’m worried about you.” She thought about it for a moment before saying, “And don’t tell anyone I said that.”

“Is that why you strong-armed Katara into letting me move in even though she hates my ass?”

Toph grinned. “She really does.”

Zuko groaned. If it wasn’t for the fact that they were on a busy street, he would’ve thunked his head down on the steering wheel. “Thanks, you tiny asshole. That really makes me feel better.”

She laughed. “Nah, she’ll get over it. She just holds a grudge like no one’s business. Besides, I think it’ll be good for both of you. Katara needs a roommate and someone to remove the stick up her ass. You need a place to live and someone to protect you from your homicidal family.”

Toph crossed her arms and stared straight ahead, face trained away from him. Zuko had known her his entire life—it felt like all the rich families in their world knew each other—and she was the only person from his old life that he actually cared about (well, besides Mai, but their relationship was an entirely different thing), so he liked to think he knew her pretty well. So when she refused to look at him, it meant she was going to say something emotional and therefore completely mortifying for her. “I worried about you being in that house with Azula, being so close to your dad. It was killing you, or it would have.”

Zuko’s eyes dropped to the scars on his wrist that he covered with his watch and some braided leather bracelets, and it didn’t take a lot to figure out what she meant. “But it didn’t. And I got out.”

“Yeah, and I don’t want you to be stuck in your own head all the time mulling over it, and that’s exactly what would’ve happened had you stayed on your uncle’s couch. Even though Iroh is a fucking badass and I want him to be my uncle. The point is, you and Katara need each other.” Her voice dropped as they approached the apartment building. “Besides, some weird virus is going around Gaoling, and I don’t want either of you to keel over and die and not be found for a week because none of us could check on you.”

“I’d be more worried about you than me, if it’s going around Gaoling.” Zuko frowned. He’d heard about the virus, some weird thing with a name he couldn’t remember, but he didn’t understand why it was a big deal, or how it would get to Ba Sing Se, what with the militaristic security surrounding the city. Agni knows they wouldn’t let anything less than perfect into their walls and risk ruining their perfect city. Then again, they did manage to let him and Azula in, so clearly they were capable of some mistakes. “Besides, to quote Joo Dee and the Dai Li—”

“‘There is no coronavirus in Ba Sing Se.’” Toph rolled her eyes at her own impersonation of the press releases constantly put out by the BSS city government. “Whatever. I’ll be fine. Rich people are always fine in these things, you know that. It’s you and your uncle and everyone else—” she waved a hand around as though the rest of their group was here—“I’m worried about.”

"I'm just worried about Katara murdering me in my sleep, especially since I probably deserve."

"True, since you used to be a huge dick. But you're not anymore, and she's not going to murder you. You're both really busy anyway, with school and work and stuff. Worse comes to worst, all you have to do is sleep and shower there." Toph shrugged.

"Great, sharing a shower is totally not gonna lead to a _Psycho_ situation."

Toph smirked. "Katara in the bathroom with a knife. At least then we'd all have a guaranteed answer for Clue during group game night."

Zuko pulled up to the apartment building at the address Katara had texted him. It was blunt, just the address and a terse _I’m free at noon. Don’t be late_.

As if he wanted to linger around here longer. He was already not looking forward to this.

Zuko had expected her to just come down to unlock the door and glare at him, but she was already waiting on the steps to the building. Even with the scowl on her face and the over-large sunglasses shielding her face from the bright spring sun, he still took note, as he always did, of how pretty she was. She was in a bright blue tank top that played nicely off her umber skin and denim cutoffs that made her legs look miles long even though she couldn’t have been more than a couple inches past five feet. Her long brown curls were pulled back into a high ponytail, her hair loops adorned with bone-colored beads, that showed off the way her shoulders and collarbones gleamed gold in the sun.

She still managed to look terrifying though, and he had always admired that about her, even when all her beautiful ire was directed at him, the way it was now as she glared at his car.

“She’s outside, isn’t she?” 

Toph’s grin was all sharp teeth as he turned to glare at her. “Again, how do you do that?”

“You just stopped breathing, so I assumed she's outside, and that she looks hot.”

“Get _out_ of my car!”

Toph obliged, humming smugly as they left the car. An old grey-blue pickup was pulling up behind the Camaro, and he recognized Sokka in the driver’s seat and Aang riding shotgun. 

“You’re early,” Katara said by way of greeting, sliding her sunglasses up and into her hair as she approached them. She arched an eyebrow at them. 

Zuko barely restrained himself from rolling his eyes. Of course she would make something polite sound like a crime. “Hello to you too.”

Toph turned to Katara, grinning. “I thought you said—”

“I know what I said,” Katara snapped at her, and Zuko raised an eyebrow at them in question.

Before he could ask though, Sokka burst out of the pickup. “Oh look, the gang’s all here!” he boomed, throwing his arms open.

“What are you doing here?” Katara complained.

“Avoiding midterms by helping our friend Zuko here move in,” Sokka said, throwing an arm around him and nearly knocking him off balance. 

Aang bounced up to them, all gangly limbs and bright, childish grin. “Hey Zuko!” He waved at him, and Zuko was once again filled with gratitude for the younger boy, who seemed to hold no resentment towards him for his abhorrent behavior last semester. With Toph already in his corner, it took little time for Aang to forgive him and even less to fold him into their circle. With Aang’s blessing, as well as Suki’s endorsement, Sokka had accepted him too.

That left only Katara and her stubborn suspicion, and he didn’t blame her, not over that fateful afternoon in the elevator when he’d taken her trust and shit all over it just for another chance at gaining his father’s fabled love. 

“It really isn’t that much stuff,” Zuko said. “You didn’t have to come.”

“Nonsense!” Sokka thumped him on the back and stole his keys, already heading for the trunk of the car. “Then we’ll get this done faster and be able to get food.”

“You only think with your stomach,” Katara chided, coming to her brother’s side as he and Aang started hauling out boxes. Zuko didn’t have anything fragile, so he just picked up his stereo system—the only expensive thing he actually valued—and watched as Sokka passed around his possessions.

Katara looked at Toph, who stood off to the side. “Do you wanna help with the stuff?”

“What stuff?” Katara glowered at her, and Toph must have felt it because she gave Katara a shit-eating grin. “Whatever, Sweetness. Just put some shit in my hands and I’ll carry it.”

Zuko passed Toph his backpack to put on. “Here. Take this and try not to trip.”

“Wow, Sparky, I was planning to throw myself down the stairs on the way out and sue your ass, but since you asked nicely…”

Between the five of them, it took only two trips, and at the end, it was only him and Katara, a box of books between them and his last duffle bag of clothes. The silence was deafening as she pushed a strand of hair out of her face. Zuko blurted, “Thanks for helping me. I can take this—”

“Why, because I’m not strong enough to do it?” Katara accused, narrowing her eyes.

Zuko rolled his eyes. “For fuck’s sake, no. I was just trying to be nice.”

“Well, don’t. It’s confusing.” Katara frowned down at the box before her expression loosened into curiosity, her brows furrowed. She picked up the one on top, a Shinji Moon book. “You read poetry?”

“I read everything,” Zuko said, and it’s true. It’s one of the only activities that can get him out of his head entirely, and this particular book is worn and marked up, he knows. “Do you know that one?”

Katara nodded, still looking down. Almost unconsciously, she said, “ _There is a shipwreck between your ribs and it took eighteen years for me to understand how to understand your kind of drowning_.”

The lilt of her voice was rhythmic and soft, and his breath caught in his chest at the way she delivered the lines, like she’d written them herself and knew it by heart. He didn’t know what to say, and she didn’t give him a chance to react, just set the book down in her box carefully and said, “Well, let’s go before they destroy our apartment.”

Katara picked up the box and walked away, already at the front door when Zuko restarted his heart and continued after her, unable to think about anything but her voice and the poem and the easy way she’d said “our apartment.”

But when it was all over and done, and the group was eating pizza crammed in at the small kitchen table, they’d all been given plenty more to think about.

All at once, every phone in the room dinged with a new notification, and they all looked at their phones. Reading the News notification, Zuko’s eyes widened, and he coughed as the bite of pizza went down his throat only half-chewed. 

Toph sucked in air through her teeth, and Sokka gasped wordlessly. Zuko hardly heard them though, transfixed by the words on the screen.

A whistleblower journalist had leaked the government memo, so the Ba Sing Se government had been forced to issue a statement. There was indeed coronavirus in Ba Sing Se, and it was spreading fast. _Dozens dead and at least five hundred hundred infected...pandemic...two week lockdown effective on Monday_.

Zuko’s head was spinning. A virus—what about his uncle? His mother and her family? Azula? How would this affect them? His job? Classes?

It dawned on him suddenly that a two-week lockdown meant staying at home, and his home was now—

Zuko and Katara looked up at each other, their eyes connecting across their circle of friends, and he realized that they were, for once, on the same page when she muttered, “Fuck.”


	2. trained myself to give up on the past

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hakoda gives Katara some fatherly advice, and Katara and Zuko go on their first pandemic grocery trip.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, my loves!
> 
> As promised, here is this week's chapter. As a reminder, I don't own ATLA, Bleachers lyrics, or Lorde lyrics. If I did, I'd have the monetary freedom to not work and post way more often.
> 
> I hope y'all like this! If you love it or hate it, let me know. I love how excited y'all are for this story, and it makes me so happy and is so inspiring to see y'all interact with this. Keep interacting and I'll keep feeding y'all this content!

I didn't know I was lonely  
'til I saw your face.  
I didn't know I was broken  
'til i wanted to change.

—bleachers, "i wanna get better"

Like every other reality-altering situation in her life, Katara immediately switched into problem-solving mode as the news of the pandemic set in.

Katara had read about viruses and other infectious diseases countless times in her classes, in preparation for med school and her future career as a general practitioner for families and children, so she knew the rules well. Wash your hands, stay six feet away, wear masks, keep hand sanitizer around at all times. 

Still, it was weird seeing the world go into a frenzy after something she’d only ever read about started to ravage the community. She was slowly starting to lose her mind that night after seeing countless posts about fights breaking out over toilet paper and the conspiracy theories escalating about how the Earth King had made up the virus to justify sticking people in Lake Laogai, the Earth Kingdom’s biggest prison.

That last one seemed far-fetched, but she was also worried about the prisoners in Lake Laogai not having enough room to social distance effectively and the guards not giving them PPE, and about the citizens of the Lower Ring not have enough space to avoid spreading the virus or the resources to procure masks and hand soap and sanitizer.

Katara would be out doing what she could to help them, if she wasn’t so fucking terrified for the people in her own life.

The night the news broke, the gang had trickled out soon after, shaken and distracted with the need to prepare for the coming lockdown. Suki and Sokka had offered to drive Toph back to Gaoling and Aang back to the little house in the Middle Ring a few streets away where he lived with Monk Gyatso, his Tibetan mastiff Appa, and his Siamese cat Momo, so Katara was left alone with Zuko with nothing to do but worry. 

Neither had really known what to say to each other without the buffer of their friends, so they both gave excuses to separate, Zuko to unpack and Katara to shower and contemplate the void.

The warm water soothed her, the steam loosening the tightness in her chest, as it always did when she was stressed. Gran Gran had always said that her affinity to water was from being from the South Pole, and Sokka often joked that she was just part fish. If she was being honest with herself, though, she thought it was the water birth her mother had had with her, leaving the protection of her mother’s belly to enter a whole new kind of solace. 

The thought of her mother brought a pang to her chest, right over her heart, and she choked back a sob and got out of the shower, heading to her room to dress and call her father.

Hakoda answered on the first ring. “Hi snowflake.”

Her childhood nickname made her throat swell, and her voice sounded thick when she said, “Hey dad. I just wanted to call and see how you are.”

As always, he seemed to know exactly what she was feeling. Then again, she’d never been able to hide her emotions, as much as she wished she could. She wore her heart on her sleeve, or rather around her neck in the form of her mother’s old betrothal necklace. “Katara, what’s wrong?”

“Have you heard about the virus?”

Hakoda hummed his affirmation. “We heard about it on the internet. They don’t think it’ll get to the South Pole, just because not many people actually come here from the other nations, and with the travel bans, that’s unlikely to change now. The South has closed its borders as well, so we should be okay.”

Katara had heard about the other nations closing their doors, so she’s glad the South Pole had followed suit. “Are y’all locking down? Do you have enough groceries? What about Gran Gran?”

Hakoda chuckled. “Still the mama tigerseal, I see.”

Katara frowned. Of course she was. Sixteen years of being the woman of the house hadn’t just magically disappeared when she and Sokka had left the South Pole for Ba Sing Se when Sokka had started at BSSU. Hence why she continued to mother her technically adult friends. “I just want to make sure that you all are prepared and safe. Is that a crime?”

“Of course not, seal-cub. We have things squared away here, and your Gran Gran lives here, so she’ll be taken care of. I don’t want you to get so caught up worrying about us that you neglect your own safety. You’re around a lot more people than we are.”

Katara bit her lip, anxiety making her chest clench like a fist. He was right. Ba Sing Se was huge, with the primary mode of travel being the trains between the rings and throughout the rings themselves. With her classes and her job, as well as the classes Zuko was TA-ing for his master’s and his job at the tea shop, they were at even more risk than her family in the South was.

“I know, dad. I’ll go grocery shopping this week, and-and—“ 

And what? As far as she knew, she still had classes. She could contract the virus by the end of the week for all they knew.

“I’m scared. And Zuko, he-he…” Katara trailed off. How could she possibly explain the mess that was her living situation now?

“Ah, yes, Sokka told me you were getting a new roommate. Something tells me you’re not too thrilled about it though.” Hakoda had the audacity to sound amused, and Katara wanted to reach through the phone and throttle him. It was obvious where Sokka got his obnoxious nature. 

“It’s Zuko, dad. Formerly Zuko Sozin, now Zuko Rokura. Same jerk, different name, as far as I can tell.” Katara scowled at the empty air, banging her heel against the edge of the bed repeatedly as she spoke.

“Didn’t he just move in today? How can you know that for sure?”

Katara pulled the phone away from her head to stare it in disbelief, but it wasn’t nearly as satisfying as it would’ve been in person, so she put it back to her ear. “Did you not hear me? He’s a Sozin, dad. Whatever he wants to call himself now, that hasn’t changed.”

“Sokka told me he left the family name now, and that’s why he had to move in to your apartment. It takes a lot to break a bond with a family like the Sozins, so maybe you shouldn’t judge him before you actually spend some time getting to know him.”

“Are you _seriously_ on his side right now?”

Hakoda sighed. “Katara, I’m on _your_ side always, and you know that. That’s why I’m telling you this. I know you’re incredibly stubborn and—”

“I am _not_ stubborn—”

Hakoda chuckled. “And I know how well you can hold a grudge, but with everything that’s going on, it makes me feel better to know that you have someone close by to help you through this.”

Katara scowled. “Help me over a cliff, maybe. You don’t even know him, dad.”

“Well, do you?”

Katara immediately wanted to spit _yes of course_ , but she hesitated, trying to remember the last time she’d actually had a conversation with Zuko. It was the elevator, when he and Aang were still fighting, and November felt like a lifetime ago. She knew she had certainly grown since then, so it wasn’t entirely out of the question that maybe Zuko had too.

Hakoda took her silence as his answer. “That’s what I thought. Katara, the bottom line is, your brother moved out and you would’ve been alone through this if it wasn’t for Zuko. It wouldn’t kill you to have someone close by in the event that you might not be seeing Sokka as often as you used to.”

Katara sighed. He was right, after all. If Ba Sing Se was going into lockdown, Aang would be staying inside to avoid putting Monk Gyatso at risk, and Sokka and Suki might not be able to come and go the way she’d thought they would be when he moved out. She didn’t know what Toph’s plans were, but she didn’t imagine that Toph’s ultra-strict parents would be okay with their chauffeur driving their daughter into a city riddled with disease very often. If anything, they’d probably use this as an excuse to bully the school into letting Toph do virtual classes at home. “So what you’re saying is I’m stuck with him. And he’s stuck with me, since he doesn’t like me any more than I like him.”

“I’m saying that for now, this is the way it is, so for the sake of your own sanity, it’s probably best to not write this off just yet.” Hakoda paused before saying, “Come on, seal-cub. I know you can do this.”

But belief that she could do this wasn’t the issue, Katara thought as she hung up the phone. She knew she could suck it up and be nice to him, but Tui and La, she hated taking the high road. She had to do it her whole life and in every single one of her relationships. Aang, Jet, Jiang—she’d always had to be the bigger person, tiptoe around their feelings, and keep herself so tightly wound and in control to protect her heart.

She always had to be the bigger person in their friend group too, had to keep Sokka and Toph in line, had to make sure Aang stayed on track with his studies since it was his first year at BSSU. No one had officially made her the mom of their group, but it’s not like anyone else was stepping up to the task, so of course she took it. Maybe she did this to herself, took on the feelings of others and made them her responsibility, but she didn’t want to do that with Zuko, not after all he’d done to Aang, all the ways his family had hurt hers.

When would it ever be her turn to be the bratty one, the petulant one?

Katara huffed, her mind made up as she grabbed a legal pad to make a grocery list to last them the foreseeable future. They had to live together, sure, but that didn’t mean she had to like him. She just had to tolerate having him around twenty-four-seven for the next two weeks. Surely that wouldn’t be too hard? Hopefully he wouldn’t be as big a disaster to live with as Sokka because she sure as hell wasn’t going to be cleaning up after him.

She probably should take him into account with the grocery list though. If he starved to death, she’d be out half the rent.

Heaving herself off her bed, Katara padded down the hall to Zuko’s room. She hesitated before taking a breath and knocking on the door.

It swung open, and she was confronted by the sight of Zuko fresh from the shower, judging by the wet black hair hanging in front of his golden eyes. He reached up to push it back out of his face, and her eyes caught on the way his tight black t-shirt caught on his bicep as he moved. “Hey Katara,” he said, giving her a little awkward wave. “What’s up?”

Wrenching her gaze away from his arm, she struggled to keep her eyes on his face. She blurted out, “We need groceries for the next few weeks. I’m going shopping tomorrow morning, so if you want something, it’s now or never.” 

She shoved the list out to him, and he took it, looking down at it perplexedly. “Um, you’re not buying my groceries.”

“Of course not. You can pay me after. But I always shopped for the groceries when Sokka lived here. It was easier to go myself and make sure it was done right than having him go and just get three bags of Doritos and forget milk and vegetables entirely.” Katara rolled her eyes.

Zuko chuckled. “Yeah, I can imagine. But there’s no way I’m letting you go out there by yourself.” 

She narrowed her eyes. He was really going to fight her on groceries? This was already turning out much more difficult than she’d expected it to be. “Why? Do you think I can’t handle it? Well, I’ve been taking care of the groceries by myself for six years and I’m not stopping now—”

He rolled his eyes. “No, Katara, that’s not why. I know you can handle everything. But why can’t you just accept that maybe sometimes you don’t have to?” He held up his phone, open to the Notes app. “I have my own list, and I was already planning to go to get groceries for my uncle too. I was actually going to ask you, since I have a car. I didn’t think you want to be on the trains right now, especially not carrying a month’s worth of groceries.”

Her eyes widened when she saw the list lit up on the screen. It was long and neat, organized by sections that mimicked the store layout, with asterisks by items meant for his uncle. The flush painted her cheeks. Was it possible to get turned on by a grocery list? Katara refused to fuck around and find out. She just said, “Oh.”

Zuko smiled. “Yeah, oh.”

“Well, um…” Katara cleared her throat. “Does seven-thirty work for you?”

Zuko raised an eyebrow. “Does that work for you? I didn’t take you as a morning person.”

Katara gritted her teeth because he was right. She was already dreading the nightmare of waking up at the ass-crack of dawn tomorrow to go shopping on a Saturday in the midst of a _pandemic_. “I’ll be fine.”

He nodded a bit skeptically. “Okay, well. I guess that settles that.”

“Yup, well...don’t be late,” Katara threatened weakly, since how could he be late if it was his car?

He huffed a laugh. “I think nice people might just say ‘thank you’ at some point.”

She smiled sweetly, saccharine. “When have you known me to be nice?”

“To other people, maybe. But I’m special.”

“Keep telling yourself that.”

“Thanks for the permission.” He grinned wolfishly at her, and she’d had enough of this not-unpleasant interaction.

It was confusing, and Katara didn’t like not having the last word, so she rolled her eyes and said, “Bye, Zuko.”

“‘Night, Katara.”

She walked away, but she didn’t hear the creak of the floorboards in his direction, so she assumed he was watching her leave, and she kind of hated how much she didn’t hate that.

+++

Zuko had always known he was a little misanthropic, but when he woke up the next morning with a tightness in his chest, he realized that he dreaded the thought of crowds and people even more knowing they could be carrying a deadly disease.

It made sense, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t surprised by the extent of his anxiety.

Zuko dressed quickly, eager to get this over with as soon as possible, and when he got to the living room, Katara was already darting around in the dark, digging out reusable bags from the closet by the front door and muttering to herself. The set of her shoulders and the ramrod straight edge of her spine told him she was feeling just as wound up as he was. She whirled around, cutting her eyes at him. “Do you have something that can act as a mask?” she demanded in lieu of a greeting.

He held up the large black handkerchief that went with one of the suits he kept from his former life as a political accessory. “I was planning to get some at the store if they had any, but if not, some people are selling homemade ones on Facebook marketplace.”

Katara nodded, seemingly satisfied, and held up a navy blue bandanna. “I was going to look for some there too, but Suko said the Kyoshi Warriors are making some as a fundraiser since they’ll be closing the studio for the time being. I already put in an order for us.”

Zuko’s mouth twitched at the “us.” “How many did you get?”

She narrowed her eyes again. “Enough. I always overstock for emergencies.”

“Well, I’ll cover some of your groceries then, and buy the masks since you paid for Suki’s.”

“Really?” she asked.

He frowned. “Are you that surprised that I’d do something nice for you? Aren’t we in this together?”

Katara pursed her lips. “Can you blame me?”

He winced. “No, I guess not.” An uncomfortable silence fell over the room at the allusion to their shared past, so he said, “Ready to go, then?”

They gathered the last of their things to go, and Zuko took the reusable bags to carry without asking her. As Katara looked down at them both, she laughed. “What?” he asked.

She gestured between them. “One of us is going to have to change.”

He looked down to see that they were both essentially wearing the same outfit: dark masks, his black leather jacket and her black fleece jacket, his ripped black jeans and her black leggings. He couldn’t help but laugh. “We look like we’re about to sneak onto an enemy ship and assassinate their captain.”

Her big blue eyes twinkled with mischief. “I guess there are worse people to go on a life-changing field trip with. As long as I get to be the one to strike the final blow.” 

“Of course. You’re definitely the more terrifying one of us, and they’d never see it coming.”

“Aw, are you scared of me, Zuko?” She elbowed him as they walked out the stairs to the first floor.

He grinned at her playful tone and said, “Only every day of my motherfucking life, but I think you already knew that.”

Her laugh was the sweetest thing he’d ever heard, and as they got into the car, he couldn’t help but think that maybe the next two weeks wouldn’t be the worst thing to happen to them.

Later, however, when they arrived at the grocery store in the center of the Middle Ring, he realized that maybe he had spoken too soon.

Pulling up to the store, he was lucky to find a parking space in the front, and he eyed the relatively small store. “Fuck,” he said. “I guess we should get this over with before too many people start coming.”

Katara nodded, eyeing the store with apprehension. “It’s been less than twenty-four hours, and I already hate coronavirus.”

“Me too. We’re off to a great start.” 

Katara sighed and pulled up her mask, pushing open the car door. “Alright. Let’s go.”

They descended on the store like spies on a mission, Zuko pushing the cart while Katara directed him where to go. It was only eight AM, still early, so there weren’t many people in the store, but that didn’t mean they weren’t still both on edge. If someone was in an aisle, they veered away from it entirely, choosing to get something else on their list that took them away from that aisle.

Even in this Minesweeper simulation, they managed to get most of the things on their list fairly quickly. Katara had grabbed as many boxes of masks and canisters of Lysol wipes as she could get hands on, and Zuko did the heavy lifting with the liters of hand soap and sanitizer as well as two gallons of bleach she requested. He wondered if maybe they were going a bit over board, but he didn’t want to say anything because he could already tell Katara was getting increasingly anxious as it was. Her fingers kept reaching up to clasp at the stone pendant hanging from the ribbon around her neck, a trait she kept coming back to more frequently as the store started to fill up and more people started to cross their path. Checking their lists, he saw they didn’t have many items to go: just paper towels and toilet paper and a few more things for his uncle, so he gave her a suggestion. “I can go get the stuff for my uncle if you want to get the paper stuff. That way we can just meet up after and leave then?”

Clenching her jaw as someone passed them too close, Katara just nodded. He eyed her as they parted and she disappeared down the paper products aisle. He didn’t know why, but he hated the idea of leaving her like this, even if it was the smartest option.

He was able to snag the last of Iroh’s groceries (more bok choy than any one person could reasonably consume and pounds of some ridiculously bougie type of trout only available in this part of the Middle Ring because its stream apparently cut through someone’s back garden), and as Zuko made his way back to the paper aisle, he realized with a sick dread that he might have to put his foot down for the first time today after all.

He couldn’t see Katara, but he could definitely see the absolute _mountain_ of toilet paper piled in their cart and the pair of turquoise Converse sticking out from underneath it. As he approached, she popped out from behind it, a few strands of hair falling out of her braid as she hoisted a family-sized pack of paper towels onto the cart, stepping back and admiring her work.

“Um, Katara?” 

She whipped around to face him, giving him a small smile. “Hi. Did you find everything your uncle needed?”

“Uh, yeah.” He looked down at the items in his hands before looking back at the cart because there was no room to set these down without upsetting the stack of bath tissue. “That’s a lot of toilet paper.”

Katara looked at the stack, eyeing it and seeming to find nothing wrong with it as she looked back at him. “Yes. We’re in a pandemic. Who knows how long we’ll be in it?”

That was fair. But— “Won’t there still be toilet paper during the pandemic?”

“The more we buy now, the less we have to leave the house.” She waved a hand in a “duh” way. 

“Do we even have room to store all this in the apartment?” Zuko asked, sizing up the pile and trying to picture where they’d have to stash it in their tiny two-bedroom.

She pursed her lips and crossed her arms petulantly. “I’ll put it in my closet, if you’re suddenly so offended at the sight of toilet paper.”

He rolled his eyes. “I’m not _offended_ by toilet paper, I’m just wondering why you feel the need to stockpile everything like we’re going into nuclear war.”

Her eyes widened comically. “Oh _right_ , we’re not as in danger of nuclear war now that your dad isn’t in office anymore. My bad, I forgot.” She smiled sweetly with blue eyes that burned into his, daring him to challenge her.

Zuko’s mouth twisted at the reminder of his father. While her barb was technically true, it still hurt to hear her remind him of that regretful part of their shared history. “Nice, way to bring him in here. He’s always the trump card when you want to get something over on me, isn’t it? Newsflash, princess, it’s not exactly the insult you think it is if I hate him just as much as you do.”

Her face fell a bit as that landed, and she muttered, “Well, still. Can you blame me?”

“No, I can’t, but I can blame you for the fact that you’re acting like a Karen right now.”

“A _Karen_?!” Katara’s nostrils flared, and it would’ve made him laugh had he not been so fucking annoyed.

“Yeah, a fucking Karen,” he spat. “You’re hoarding toilet paper and arguing with me about it like some white lady in a viral video. Do you wanna call the manager on me too?”

“How _dare_ you—“”

“I know you’re scared right now, I know you’re anxious, but hoarding ten economy packs of toilet paper is not the way to deal with it.” He shook his head. “Katara, other people need toilet paper too, ya know. We have a car, we can go back out when we run out. Not everyone can.”

That seemed to shake her out of her anger, and her face softened, her shoulders slumping a bit. “I guess not.”

His annoyance dissipated, and he thought that maybe therapy had actually done him some good since he hadn’t gone berserk on her in front of the Angel Soft. “I just…I also feel like this all won’t fit in the car,” he admitted.

She sighed. “Probably.” She took two of the packs off the cart and put them back on the shelf, before taking three more and putting them back as well at his expectant look. “There. These are ours. I’m not budging on these,” she pouted, sweeping her arm over the remaining packs in the cart.

He sighed but relented. “Fine. I’ll let you have that.”

The tiny satisfied smile on her face almost made up for the fact that he’d probably have to play Tetris with his car to fit them in with the other groceries.

She didn’t speak to him on the way to checkout, and her mouth was still tight, so she was definitely still mad at him, and his stomach twisted at the thought.

It wasn’t until they had gotten in the car, post-car Tetris, that Katara muttered, “I’m not a Karen.”

“You’re not. You just exhibited Karen-like behavior.”

Zuko cursed himself as she turned to glare at him. He should have said something else, literally anything. Why was he so bad at being good? “I’m sorry for calling you a Karen though. That wasn’t cool.”

Katara stared at him before sighing. “I guess I kind of was acting like one, huh?”

He nodded sheepishly. “Look, I get it though. It’s a weird time. This has never happened to us before. We’re all a little anxious about it. We’re allowed to freak out a little over toilet paper. Over everything, really.”

Katara nodded. “You don’t seem freaked out though,” she muttered.

He gave a scoffing laugh. “Are you serious? I’m scared every fucking second. For my uncle especially. He owns a tea shop and he can’t afford to close it. He’s reduced the hours, but that’s as much as he can do. I’m scared for my mom and her husband and my half-sister. I’m scared for me because I work at said tea shop and that means I’m gonna be exposed and so are you.” He swallowed a bit, tipping his head a bit to look at her. “I’m scared for us.”

“Us?” Her brow furrowed.

Zuko nodded. “I’m scared because this wasn’t what either of us expected when we agreed to move in together. I know I’m not exactly the top of the list of people you’d want to be stuck in an apocalypse with.”

Katara gave a soft and sad laugh. “You couldn’t beat out Kehlani, no.”

He chuckled too. “I’d never expect to. The point is,” he continued, “I’m just afraid that my being here will make this pandemic that much more difficult for you to deal with, and that’s the last thing in the world that I want for you.”

“Zuko, do you really think that little of yourself?”

“Can you blame me?” He said, echoing her earlier statement and giving her a wry smile. “I’ve never really actually apologized for that day in the elevator, have I?”

Zuko almost missed the barely-audible intake of breath that she gave before she said, “No, you haven’t.”

Zuko cleared his throat. “Yeah, I suppose not. I’m really really sorry. Not for our conversation, but for everything that happened after. I was still a dick to you because I was fighting with Aang in class, and I was still trying to get on my father’s good side, so that gave me tunnel vision about everything else in my life.” 

Katara nodded, and she reached up to touch the necklace at her throat, her eyes far away. “I can understand that. When my mom died…I lost sight of everyone else’s feelings about it and only thought of my own. I couldn’t see beyond my own pain, and I just channeled it into taking care of everyone around me without actually dealing with it.”

That explained her mom friend reputation throughout the group, and Zuko felt another piece of the puzzle that was Katara sliding into place. “Yeah, so you know how it can be. Still, that doesn’t excuse the fact that you opened up to me and I was a total dick to you, so I’m really sorry.”

Katara nodded. “Thank you. I think...I was hurt because you were someone new who didn’t know anything about me, and I gave you this piece of myself, and you kind of--”

Zuko winced. “Threw it away like it meant nothing to me.”

“Yeah, exactly.” She fiddled with the necklace again and whispered, “Some people have done that before. My first boyfriend, my last girlfriend...So I think I just added you to the pile because acting like you were just my enemy and nothing more was easier than admitting I’d cared about another person who’d let me down.”

Zuko noted the casual way she’d said “girlfriend” and marked that down as something to ask about later because now his heart was splintering under her forlorn gaze, the blue glassy with unshed tears. “I am so sorry. And also...it didn’t, you know.”

“What?”

“Mean nothing to me. It...it kind of meant everything to me, that you trusted me enough to share something so personal with me even though you knew who I was and what I’d done.”

That day in the elevator, in the dark cut only by the flashlights of their phones, they’d swapped stories about their tragic backgrounds. She told him, without details, that her mother was dead because of the Fire Nation’s deadly dealings on the South Pole, and he told her how his father had driven his mother away when he was eleven, how they’d only recently reconnected after a decade apart. He remembered looking at her across the floor and thinking that he’d never met anyone whose pain had called out to his own.

It was fucking terrifying.

“So why did you do it?” she whispered, and her words echoed around the parked car. Zuko knew he should probably move out of the parking spot to make room for someone else, but for some reason, it felt wrong to move forward without having this conversation, so he stayed still as he mulled over her question.

“I think…” He swallowed thickly as the heavy words stuck in his throat. He forced them out anyway. He owed her this, and more. “I think it scared me. You had everything ripped away from you by my family, and I...I couldn’t look at you without remembering that, remembering what I wanted to forget for so long.” Zuko sighed. “You messed with my whole plan for my life. You threw a wrench into the blueprint of my life, and that’s why I avoided you. I didn’t want to see it, and I couldn’t, not until I started to talk to my uncle again and started going to therapy. But then it was too late. You already hated me, and I was embarrassed to come back and ask for your forgiveness.”

Katara smiled at him sadly. “Sounds like I ruined your life.”

He gave a laugh, and it was soft but genuine. “At the time, that’s what I thought. But I think you might’ve saved it instead.” The scars all along his body under his clothes throbbed, whether they’re self-inflicted or not, and he thinks, not for the first time, how grateful he is that the seed of doubt she’d planted in him that day had bloomed courage in him.

“Well…” Katara paused for a moment, drumming her fingers on her thigh. “Knowing all that, I think...I think maybe I can forgive you.”

Zuko’s heart squeezed. “Really?” he asked breathlessly, his hope thudding in his ears along with his heartbeat.

She nodded, giving him a smile that was kinder than any she had before. “ _If being afraid is a crime, we hang side by side_.”

He couldn’t help but laugh at that. “Did you really just give me your forgiveness by quoting a Lorde song at me?”

“Make fun of me and I’ll take it back.” Katara rolled her eyes and elbowed his arm, and the relief at her easy affection flooded his veins and lifted his spirits. “Now, come on. Let’s go home.”

The grin that gave him nearly split his face in two, and he said, “Yes ma’am” as he started the car and turned the wheel towards home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's what I have for this week, folks! I have an outline for this, so I know what's coming, but if y'all have any suggestions for quarantine shenanigans you want to see our favorite pair get into, let me know in the comments! Kudos and comments feed the plot monster in me. Love you all!  
>    
> I know "Swingin Party" is originally a Replacements song, but I feel like the Lorde version is more aesthetically applicable here. Regardless, I don't own either of them.


	3. hold it tight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Katara considers selling nudes, Zuko is infuriatingly a morning person who can't knock, and Iroh gives sage advice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, babes! I hope you enjoy this, and please make your opinions known in the comments!

don't wreck your brain.  
it'll be alright.  
we're in a weird time of life.

—YUNGBLUD, "weird!"

**DAY 1**

Katara forgave him, sure. That didn’t mean she trusted him.

Here’s the thing. Katara knew how to hold a grudge. Thirteen years of holding a storm of hatred in her body for her mother’s murderer made it difficult to let go of anything. She often feels like a collector of resentments, picking up one and then another to lock them away in her chest of nightmares. She never opened it, mostly tried to forget it was there, but always knew that in her darkest moments, she could unlock it and let herself fall in. 

Jet, Jiang, hell, even Aang, though they had put their relationship and the ensuing awkwardness of their breakup behind them. She had mourned the losses, holding the anger over the wounds in her chest until they healed, and still pressed on the scars long after they healed to remind herself to not be fooled again. This time it was no different.

Katara realized that it was going to be much harder than she’d thought to stop feeling like Zuko was the bane of her existence when she woke up on the first day of virtual classes to the sound of some white dude saying “I’m going to piggyback off that” loudly from the living room.

Snuggling deeper into her comforter, Katara groaned and rolled onto her stomach, one hand poking out of the blanket to grope around her nightstand. Finding her phone, she peeked at the time and dropped her head back onto her pillow.

Eight am. The asshole had a class at _eight in the morning_.

The earliest class Katara had ever taken was at nine am lecture during her sophomore year, and she had had a hellish time trying to make it out of bed for that, so this year she’d vowed to never ever take a class before ten. Now, because of a stupid virus, she had to endure an eight am seminar for a class she wasn’t even getting credit for.

Forcing her eyes open, she opened up her messages and typed out a text to Zuko. She wasn’t heartless—or energized—enough to go over and yell at him in front of the first-year babies in the lit class he was TA-ing, so this would have to do.

_Can you at least put on headphones? Some of us are trying to sleep._

The three typing dots appeared almost instantly. _Broken. New ones are coming this week. For now, you’ll just have to deal with not wasting away the morning._

Katara scowled at the phone and, without thinking about it, opened her camera and took a picture of her extended middle finger in the light coming through her curtains. A low raspy laugh sounded from the living room, and she couldn’t help but smile too, even if she was still annoyed as hell.

Well. At least she could smell coffee. 

She hesitated at the door, wondering if it was safe to cross the living room. He couldn’t really be the socially unaware kind of dumbass that would sit with his back to the room so his camera showed everyone _everything_ , but you never know. She grabbed her light robe off the wall and slipped it on over her blue sleep tank and loose pajama pants before jerking open the door.

Luckily, Zuko was on the loveseat, his back to the far wall and his notes spread out on the coffee table in front of him. His golden eyes flickered up to her as she crossed the room, giving her a smirk as she glowered at him before entering the kitchen in search of coffee.

The coffee pot was half full, her favorite chipped sky blue mug that she’d made herself when she and Toph had taken a pottery class whilst drunk last semester sitting beside it. The sugar bowl was close by, the oat milk beside it as though he’d known she’d wake up right when his class started. She grumbled as she mixed her coffee because damn if this jerk wasn’t considerate.

Zuko, a considerate jerk. Who knew?

Katara busied herself with breakfast, scrolling through Twitter on her phone as she rummaged around for cereal. Preparing a bowl, she sat at the kitchen table, with nowhere to look except at Zuko. As irritated as she was at him, she begrudgingly admitted it was a nice view. He was still in his red plaid pajama bottoms, with yet another tight black t-shirt on top, and he had a pen stuck behind his ear. He had his hair pulled back in a topknot, a few hairs sticking out of the otherwise neat bun. He regarded the screen seriously, his gaze never wavering, and as she ate and checked Instagram, she couldn’t help but note how confident he sounded as he patiently and thoroughly answered all the first-years’ questions. 

_That’s an astute observation, Song. Yes, we absolutely have to include class privilege when we talk about why the composition of Bloom’s canon is inherently racist and sexist…_

_We’re not going to be reading James Joyce, don’t worry. There are more relevant examples of fractured narrative than that, and I don’t want to hear any of you try and badly explain Ulysses because Dr. Piandao will chew both of us out, and I’d rather not go through that again, thanks..._

_No, actually, Teo, it might even be easier to meet with Dr. Piandao or myself now that we’re all virtual, so all you have to do is shoot us an email and we’ll be happy to set something up._

A smile escaped her, and Katara couldn’t help but think that the first years were lucky to have a TA like Zuko. She loved to read, but the racism and sexism of the professors in the department was what ultimately put her off from taking more literature classes. It was already hard enough to deal with in her classes for pre-med, and since she couldn’t drop those, she tried not to go looking for _more_ headaches. 

But, as Zuko stretched and put his hands behind his head, his biceps flexing, while he calmly and professionally tore into a boy who made a homophobic comment about Whitman, she couldn’t help but think that maybe she would’ve taken more English classes if he’d been TA-ing them.

Fuck, she must really be struggling with having been in a dry spell even pre-quarantine if she was starting to feel attracted to _Zuko_ , of all people.

An email notification drew her attention away from the class happening in front of her, so she looked down and opened her Gmail. At the subject of the new email, her eyes widened, and she groaned, “Fuck.”

Zuko’s eyes snapped up to hers, and he raised an eyebrow. She winced, throwing a glance at his laptop, and mouthed, _Sorry_ , as she stood up from the table and put her bowl in the sink. Bolting from the room, she grabbed her laptop and sank down onto her bed, pulling up her email in the hopes it had changed in the transition from laptop to phone, but alas, no luck. The email from Dr. Yagoda was clear. 

The medical library was now closed to browsing and only taking orders for books, and only Dr. Yugoda and her assistant were allowed to be in there now. Katara and the other workers were, thank Tui, getting a stipend every two weeks for the rest of the year, but Katara had no idea what she was going to do after the year was over. 

She shoved her laptop aside and pressed her palms to her eyes, rubbing them and making bright fiery colors flash across her closed lids. What was she going to do? She had enough for the end of the year, but after that? Would there still be a pandemic? Would she be able to get a job remotely or would she have to work in the public and risk contracting the disease? Would there even be any jobs at that time or would the economy have suffered so much during the shutdown that no one would be able to hire anymore?

That OnlyFans idea was starting to get more and more appealing.

Katara needed advice, but the gang’s group chat was out because she really didn’t want to deal with Sokka’s freaking out and Aang’s overly positive attitude, so she pulled up the group chat that she had with Suki and Toph. 

KATARA: Do y’all know anyone who’ll hire me in june to give uncertified medical attention? 

SUKI: p sure that’s illegal babe but i’m almost 100% sure kyoshi would be down ngl

TOPH: we’re in a panoramic who tf cares about the law

KATARA: to the Dai Li agents in our phones, legally that was a joke

TOPH: no it was not fight me fuckers

KATARA: omg toph you’re not helping

SUKI: why do you need a job? Don’t you work at the library?

SUKI: oh wait fuck.

KATARA: yea exactly. They’re closing. I’m paid through the end of the year but after that, I’m going to starve

TOPH: wow dramatic much, sugar queen? 

Katara rolled her eyes. She should have thought of this before talking to a rich kid about something as foreign to them as losing a _job_.

KATARA: ah yes bc you know all about not having money

SUKI: she’s right, Toph

TOPH: ugh fine, sorry or whatever. I could ask my parents for money. Call it reparations for the fact that they don’t fucking pay their taxes

KATARA: noah fence but I can’t stand your parents and i’d totally take their money if it didn’t make feel gross

TOPH: none taken bc same

SUKI: well, I’ll ask kyoshi if she knows anyone hiring but i’m so sorry babe

TOPH: well, if you change your mind, hmu. There’s always onlyfans. Work that WAP, mama

KATARA: I HATE YOU SO MUCH RIGHT NOW

Katara flushed at the reference and she gave a short, choking gasp before she heard, “Katara? What’s going on?”

Katara’s head snapped up, and she blinked away the splotches to see Zuko standing in her doorway, holding a towel. She looked at the time before she locked her phone. It was almost an hour past eight, so his class must have ended. 

“Nothing!” she snapped, her voice higher than she’d like it to be.

Zuko raised his lone brow. “Yeah, that sounds convincing.”

“It’s none of your business.” She really didn’t feel like talking about her money troubles with a former rich kid, even if he was now probably just as broke as she was. Her anxiety had eased with the distraction of the group chat, but she still really didn’t want to discuss it. “Don’t you have more hot water to use up?”

“That was _one time_ , for Agni’s sake.” His mouth twisted, and she almost felt bad until he said, “But I guess I was, until I found this on my towel.”

To her mortification, he held up a clump of wavy brown hair, and she flushed. “Well, maybe if you’d stop putting your towel so close to mine—”

He tossed the hairball into her little blue trash bin. “There’s only one towel rack!”

“Well, hang it on the shower rod.”

“It’s a tension rod, not bolted into the wall, and I don’t know about you, but I’d rather not have the whole thing come crashing down on me while I’m trying to shower.”

She cursed internally. He was right because of course he was. He was always infuriatingly correct at the most inconvenient moments. “Well, then I guess you’ll just have to deal with it.”

He glared at her. “Fine. Just like you’ll have to deal with my 8am class until my headphones arrive.”

Katara narrowed her eyes at him. “Fuck you.”

“Same to you, princess,” he said as he turned around and stalked off in the direction of the bathroom.

Katara shook her head before looking at her phone again and then down at her sprawled figure. She had a nice enough body. Maybe she _could_ get an OnlyFans, or a premium Snap. Hell, she could probably just Venmo request her exes for all the nudes she’d sent in the past. Jet was a loser and a broke one at that, but Jiang had a high-paying job as an associate art dealer and her own apartment in the Upper Ring, so maybe she wouldn’t mind paying Katara back. Besides, the photos she’d sent to Jiang when they were together were top-quality, if she said so herself. 

Oh hell. Why not take a few pics and see if she could make a career out of it? She didn't have to show anyone, and what else did she have to do in quarantine?

She pushed the door closed a little and listened until she heard the shower water turned on before getting up and stripping down to just her sky blue boy shorts and grabbing her phone.

Katara spent a lot of time at the gym and doing yoga to reveal her anxiety, but that didn’t mean she didn’t have her own insecurities about her stretch marks and cellulite wrinkles, so she twisted and turned, taking test shots. Back arched, chest pushed out, bottom lip caught between her teeth, a hand trailing down her torso, she tried to see what a lover would see. What she would want a lover to see. She remembered the times she’d been looked at with intensity she couldn’t explain that made her feel things she had never expected, smoldering brown eyes, green, hazel, _gold_ —

Katara pushed that last one away, focusing on checking the photos. They weren’t bad, but she definitely couldn't see herself wanting to do this all the time and sending them to people she didn’t know, even if they _did_ pay her—

The door swung open before she could react. “Hey, where did you put the—”

Katara’s blood rushed to her face, and she swept her tank top off the bed to cover her chest. Glaring at Zuko’s suddenly ashen face, she shoved the door until only a sliver of his face remained in sight as she hid behind the wood. “ _Tui and La_ , do you _ever_ knock?”

Zuko looked like he’d swallowed a wood frog, or needed to suck a wood frog. “Katara, I am so—”

“ _What do you need_?” Her voice came out as a hiss, and she hoped he couldn’t tell how absolutely mortifying this was for her. 

At least he seemed to be as embarrassed as she was, judging by the way he was carefully avoiding looking anywhere but at her face, and as red as hers felt right now, she thought his might be even worse. “I can’t find the cotton swabs.”

“Hall closet, top shelf.”

“Why would you put them somewhere that’s not the bathroom?

She gritted her teeth, staring at him in disbelief. “ _Seriously_? You’re going to question me right now?”

He shut his mouth with an audible snap and shook his head, his messy hair falling into his face, and she was surprised how shy he looked right now, with none of the smugness she would’ve expected from someone who enjoyed antagonizing her so much. “Um, yeah, I mean, no, I—I’m going to shower and then go to work, so um, you can continue?”

“Thanks,” she deadpanned. Without waiting to see his reaction, she shut the door in his face and leaned back against it, still holding her shirt to her chest. She held her breath until she heard the bathroom door shut before letting out a shaky breath, feeling her face return to a normal color as her heart continued to thud in her ears. 

What the hell just happened?

+++

Stupid. Idiotic. Moronic.

How many synonyms could Zuko come up with until he found one to accurately describe the fact that he’d barged into her bedroom without knocking like an asshole?

The Jasmine Dragon’s lunch rush wasn’t nearly as busy as it usually was, since most of their customers at this time were students grabbing a bite to eat between classes, so it wasn’t enough to distract him from everything that had happened in the apartment this morning. As he filled orders for DoorDash in between the customers that did wander in. 

First he’d woken her up at her version of an ungodly hour with his first-year literature seminar, and then he’d stoked the fire with the shower argument, and then the walk-in happened. Even worse, he couldn’t get the latter out of his mind, how her hair had spilled down her bare back like waves against the sea of dark skin, the Southern Water Tribe symbol tattooed on one shoulder, the way her body had arched wantonly for the phone camera in her hand. 

He hated the way he couldn’t stop wondering who she was sending to those photos, hated the way he couldn’t explain why it made his stomach burn with a feeling he knew well but refused to name, hated the way he no longer hated her and because of that he didn’t really know how he was supposed to feel about her. 

That kind of emotional vacuum was new territory for him.

Zuko’s phone dinged as he stood at the counter, and he checked it to see it was the group chat, to which he’d been recently added.

It hadn’t stopped blowing up his phone since.

SOKKA: I’M BORED

SOKKA: AND WE DON’T HAVE YEAST

KATARA: Why do you need yeast? You don’t know how to use yeast. I’ve been the one making  
the bread in this family for years.

SUKI: I got two jars check the cabinets

SUKI: He found hannahbreadtok and she makes it look easy so he feels challenged

TOPH: YEET YEET

AANG: SKRRT SKRRT

KATARA: oh my GAWD they didn’t even say yeet they said YEAST

TOPH: YEAST SKRRT

AANG: YEAST SKRRT

TOPH: YOU NEVER LOVED ME MOM

AANG: BUT I NEEDED YOU WHOA OOH OH

SUKI: word association is powerful

KATARA: i hate it here

SOKKA: YES i found it  
SOKKA: prepare for some fresh baked awesomeness

SUKI: pls be safe

KATARA: Having a sourdough starter around wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world tbh. I keep seeing them on my TikTok

SUKI: The algorithm must be brainwashing you because i’ve been getting them too.

TOPH: you really want another kid to take care of?

KATARA: it doesn’t talk or ask me for the answers to problem sets so I’ll take it.

“What is troubling you, nephew?” Uncle’s voice brought Zuko back to the present, and he turned to see Iroh looking at him expectantly from the counter, head tipped in thought. “I have not seen you look so lost in a long time.”

“I’m sorry, Uncle.” Zuko shook his head, pocketing his phone. “It’s nothing. Just distracted because the world is ending, and all that.”

Iroh’s eyes wrinkled at the corners. “I have seen the world end many times in my life, Zuko. Regrettably, I have even participated in its demise.” Zuko winced at the reminder of his uncle’s time as General of the Fire Nation army, facilitating their colonization until his son died in battle ten years ago. He’d withdrawn from the military after that and dedicated his time to the tea shop that had become his pride and joy after everything he’d done.

The things Zuko had done in his life paled in comparison to his uncle’s past as a war criminal, so it gave him hope that maybe there lay redemption somewhere in him too.

His uncle continued, “But somehow I think that world events are not the only thing that has you mixing up orders today.”

Zuko cringed, thinking about all the to-go cups he’d had to throw away because he’d given people ginseng instead of ginger and vice versa. “It’s just been an adjustment is all, living with Katara.”

“Ah, yes. Miss Beifong used to bring her to the shop. She’s very kind, always insists on paying even though I tell her not to.” Iroh’s brow furrowed. “Are the two of you not getting along?” 

Zuko rubbed the back of his neck. “We didn’t, really, not when we first met. I was kind of...well, you know how I was.”

“I do remember, yes.” Iroh gave him a sad smile as he prepared the teapot for their latest customer. 

Zuko winced, remembering his anger issues and his perpetual sulkiness, how sad he was, and how much of a nightmare he was to everyone because of it. “Yeah, well...She got caught in the crossfire of that awhile back, and I was mean to her, and she told me she forgave me on Saturday, but… It’s complicated.”

“How so?”

Zuko shook his head. “I don’t know. I guess… We’re not still mad at each other, but we’re not exactly friends, and living together doesn’t help.”

“Domestic squabbles can occur even between friends. No matter what sort of past the two of you had, there was bound to be an adjustment period.”

He was right, but… “But other people who weren’t enemies would be easier to deal with. There’s still all this stuff between us, and even if she’s forgiven me, she hasn’t forgotten what happened, and I wouldn’t expect her to anyway. But now every argument we have makes everything feel more...unstable, I guess.”

Iroh nodded. “You’re not the only one feeling the instability, nephew. Have you thought that maybe she, too, feels like she is on shifting ground? Her brother moved out, and the nature of your relationship is changing, all in the midst of a global pandemic.”

Zuko sighed. “I’ve thought about that, yes. But I don’t know how to fix it, or how to-how to—” How to make up for everything he’s done. How to comfort her. How to comfort himself. “I don’t know how to make it better.”

“You must begin by asking yourself what you want out of this arrangement. Do you want to be friends with Katara, Zuko?”

It felt impossible to think about them being friends, after everything that has happened between them, but Zuko knows that with everything happening in the world, everything that has happened in their own life, it wouldn’t hurt to have the person you’re living with on your team.

And even though he had no right to her friendship, he couldn’t help but know that he wanted it. Desperately. He’d seen the way she cared for her friends, knew from Sokka’s many stories that she’d been the glue that held their family together, saw how tirelessly she tried to fix and help and save everyone around them. He wanted to be someone that she cared about, but even more, he wanted to be someone that could care for her too, someone she could count on, even now in this ridiculously tumultuous time.

Everyone needed someone like that, and he wasn’t sure if Katara had ever had that before. Now was as good a time as any to start.

“Yes, I do. I really do,” he answered, nodding.

Iroh beamed at him. “The road most painstakingly paved yields the smoothest journey. You must be patient, nephew. Now, how would you like to begin?”

Zuko wasn’t sure. After what happened this morning, he could very well come home to find his stuff in boxes on the front steps, and he didn’t think she’d be keen on spending more time with him, but an idea was growing in his mind as he thought of the group texts he’d seen just now. “You wouldn’t happen to have a recipe for a sourdough starter, would you?”

Iroh’s eyes twinkled, and he grinned wide, clapping his hands together. “Oh nephew, I’ve been waiting years for you to ask that!”

Zuko gave a rueful smile, prepared for a long-winded monologue full of prophetic metaphors about bread being the substance of life, as he passed his uncle a notebook and pen. 

Oh well. Starting an actual friendship with Katara would be worth the thirty minutes it would take to untangle Uncle’s grain-based proverbs.

Zuko was nervous as he drove home from his shift, and it wasn’t just because he’d spent eight hours potentially being exposed to coronavirus. The folded paper with the recipe was burning a hole in his pocket, as well as the plastic bags filled with three three different types of flour (Uncle had insisted, after a monologue about the merits of each, even though Zuko had told him that they already had a small mountain of the stuff stocked away in one of the cabinets) sitting on the passenger seat. Would this be too on the nose? Would she think he’s trying to bribe her? Would she hate him for her? 

Agni, what if she hated him?

But his belongings were not packed up on the stoop, or in front of the door to the apartment, so Zuko took that as a good sign.

He let himself in. He didn’t see her in the kitchen or the living room, and he heard CHVRCHES coming from her room, so he stripped down in the entryway, as had become their routine in quarantine. They both agreed that outside clothes should go in the hamper by the front door as soon as they stepped inside, shoes off (as was tradition even before quarantine), so he stepped out of everything and sanitized his hands with the Purel they’d set on the end table besides a container of Lysol wipes. He wiped the bags of flour down and set them on the counter in the kitchen, tucking the recipe underneath, before using the hand sanitizer again.

Exhaustive? Yes. Safe? Also yes.

Decontamination complete, Zuko couldn’t help but feel awkward as he peeked down the hall to make sure she couldn’t see him walk to the shower in his briefs. Thankfully her door was closed, so he ducked into the bathroom quickly to scrub the outside world off him.

When he was finally clean and dressed in comfortable clothes, Zuko emerged from his room to see that Katara’s door was now half-open, more than it had been this morning when he’d barged in, and he couldn’t help but feel like it was a small mercy, whether it was from Katara or the universe.

He winced. He’d apologize for that first.

Taking a deep breath, Zuko knocked. 

“You learn fast” was the reply, and he bit back a smile as he took that as permission and pushed the door open wider.

Katara was on her beanbag chair in the corner of the room, her laptop balanced on her stomach and a thick textbook open beside her. She was in a simple navy v-neck and pajama shorts, and he studiously kept his eyes away from her legs, crossed with one bobbing in the air in time to the music. She paused the music and peered up at him, the light from the computer making her skin glow an ethereal blue. He couldn’t read her expression, which was always terrifying.

“Hey,” he said, giving an awkward wave.

“Hey yourself.” There was a beat, and then she asked, “How was work?”

“It was fine. Well, we’ll know in two weeks, right?”

She gave a sharp, dry laugh. “Ha. I guess so.”

He laughed too because it was either laugh or cry at the life-threatening virus that had completely changed their lives. When he sobered up, he continued, swallowing thickly. “So um, I just wanted to apologize for this morning. I should’ve knocked, and it was really rude of me to barge in like that.”

Katara’s blue eyes searched his face, as though looking for something, and she finally nodded, closing her laptop and setting it aside as she stood up. “It’s fine. I mean, it wasn’t fine not to knock, and you should from now on—” Zuko nodded quickly— “but I’m not mad at you. You didn’t see anything right?”

Zuko shook his head quickly. She nodded again. “Okay, well, then yeah, I’m not mad. And I’m sorry about saying ‘fuck’ in your seminar this morning, even though it’s your fault for having a class that early in the first place.”

He laughed out of sheer relief that she hadn’t punched him in the face. Katara gave him a small smile. “This is going to be an adjustment for both of us, isn’t it? Living together.”

“In a pandemic too. So maybe it’s best if we, ya know, try and get along?” Zuko rubbed the back of his neck as he said, “I know that we’re probably not going to be like best friends or anything, but...it would be cool if we could be, like, I don’t know…”

“People who support each other in a pandemic and don’t hate each other’s guts?” Katara supplied. 

Zuko nodded. “Yeah, that.”

Katara crossed her arms over her chest, and he refused to let his eyes waver and ruined his moment. She seemed to be holding back a smile, like this was some test he’d passed. “Well, I think I can handle that. Can you?”

Zuko gave her a half-smile. “Yup, and to prove it, I got you something.”

Katara raised an eyebrow as he held out the folded slip of paper to her. She took it, scrutinizing it carefully. “Is this…?”

“Uncle Iroh’s sourdough recipe.” Agni, the amount of blood rushing to his face right now was enough to make him want to combust on the spot. 

Katara looked back up at him, her blue eyes wide and glittering, her lips parted in surprise. “You asked your uncle for his sourdough starter recipe? For what?”

“I thought—you mentioned in the group chat that—and I was thinking that maybe it might be fun to have a starter? Iroh gave us flour even though I told him we already had some—”

Her lips had started to split. “I mentioned making a starter in a stupid group text and you got me a recipe.”

His ears must be on fire by now because Katara’s wide grin was setting something inside of him aflame and he couldn’t figure out how to stop the burn. “Um, yeah?”

“Zuko, that’s really nice,” she breathed, like she couldn’t believe it.

“It wasn’t that big a deal.”

She raised her eyebrows in amusement as she waved the paper in his face. “It’s totally a big deal. We’re going to be parents.”

“Parents? Katara, it’s flour and water.”

Katara clapped her hands and hopped a bit, eyes twinkling with mischief as she poked him in the chest with a finger. “Don’t you dare talk about our bread baby this way.”

“You really want to make it with me?” he asked. His voice sounded small and shy and pathetic, but he’d been hoping she would, and now she seemed actually _excited_ to do this with him—

“Duh, Zuko.” Katara rolled her eyes, breezing past him and crossing the threshold to the hallway, turning around to face him as she bounced on the balls of her feet. “You can’t bring me an apology starter recipe from your uncle and not make it with me. If you don’t follow me to the kitchen right now, I’m rescinding my forgiveness for everything.”

Katara beckoned him with a wave of her hand, and that was all the invitation he needed. Grinning, Zuko crossed the threshold and followed her into battle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! ZK are inching ever closer to a friendship (and a bread baby), and I'm really excited for the content to come. :) Please let me know what you think! Kudos and comments mean the world to me. I love y'all and I'll see you next week!


	4. till it pulled us to this time and place

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Katara and Zuko bond over the fact that they're both huge fucking nerds.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm baaaack! As promised, here is this week's update. Y'all keep me going with your super sweet comments, and I live for your feedback, whether it's compliments or constructive criticism. Thanks for being the best quarantine company a girl could ask for.
> 
> This is a shorter chapter today, just because our babies just wanted to get to know each other a bit, apparently. More plot will happen next week, but this is just a conversation I wanted to post because I just wanted them to talk to each other, ya know?
> 
> Work is kicking my ass, and I assist three people while only getting paid for one, so I wrote this while on the clock. Boss makes a dollar, I make a dime, that's why I write ZK fic on company time. Just thought y'all should know.
> 
> I don't own this BMTH song or any BMTH song, and I don't own that Joan Didion quote either.

No amount of words could ever find a way to make sense of this,  
so I wanna hear your mother tongue

—bring me the horizon, "mother tongue"

**DAY 1**

“So...that’s it?” Katara said, staring down at the mix of flour and water in the jar through the lid. The mess of flour on the kitchen counter, and on her and Zuko, made it seem like they’d done battle with a baker, not just mixed a bit of flour and water in a big mason jar.

Zuko checked the recipe again and nodded. “According to this, yeah. The real work comes later.” He showed her the back side of the paper, Iroh’s tiny neat handwriting detailing every step of the process for the next week until, possibly, the end of forever. 

Katara took the paper, studying it carefully. This was a lot more detailed than she thought. “Looks like we’re going to have to create some type of feeding schedule, unless we’re going to use it after like a week. Which I kind of don’t want to do because I’m very curious to see whether we can keep this thing alive.”

“Every succulent Uncle ever gave me died within a month, so...is it weird that I feel challenged?”  
Zuko stared down at the starter like it had challenged him to a duel by fire. “My honor is at stake here.”

Katara giggled. “I guess I chose a good co-parent then. Too persistent to give into failure.”

“I don’t think a starter has ever had more stubborn parents.”

“Agreed.” Katara noticed a bit of flour on the left side of his face, right under his scar. “You have a little flour, right there.” She tapped at the left side of her own face to show him.

His eyebrow furrowed, and he wiped at it, missing it entirely. “Is it gone?”

Her mouth twitched. “Nope, still there. Higher up.”

He went too high, spreading it into his temple. “There?”

Now she had to laugh, shaking her head. “No, you’re just making it worse. Here.”

Without thinking, she dipped a thumb into the leftover water and cupped that side of his face. She realized what she’d done when her thumb swept over the bottom of the scar and he froze. “Is this okay?” she asked.

Zuko swallowed and shook his head. “No, yeah, it’s fine.” He seemed to relax, leaning into her touch the slightest bit. “Just wasn’t expecting it. It’s okay though.”

Katara searched his face, but his golden eyes were honest, his half-smile small and genuine, so she continued, sweeping her thumb over the scar until she’d wiped away every bit of flour. His skin was almost hot to the touch, and she knew her internal temperature ran a little cooler and always had, so she couldn’t help but linger a bit longer, marveling at the contrast. She remembered herself and dropped her hand. “Your skin is really warm. Do you have a fever?” she asked, her pulse spiking a bit at the thought.

Zuko chuckled, shaking his head. “No, I just run warm. It used to freak my mom out because she always thought I had a fever, until she realized I was just that temperature all the time.”

Katara smiled, thinking about a tiny Zuko being chased with a thermometer. “Your immune system must always feel like it’s going to be attacked, so it runs a precautionary fever just in case.”

Something flickered in his eyes, and his shoulders dropped a bit. She wondered whether she’d said something wrong before he said, “An astute observation, Dr. Kuruk. Probably a byproduct of being an abused child.”

Before she could react to that, his eyes dropped to the starter and said, “So where do we store this thing?”

After clearing out a space for it on the counter, so they could look at it every day and determine when it needed to be fed, Katara fidgeted by the stove, hands picking at the hem of her flour-covered t-shirt. “So, um, I’m gonna need to change this.”

Zuko looked down at his own shirt. “Huh, yeah, same.”

“Yeah.” What were they supposed to do now? They had just agreed to not hate each other, but what did that mean for them, for the apartment? It scared her, this openness.

Katara didn’t know how to broach the subject with him, but she did know a little something about fear, and exposure therapy was supposed to be helpful… “I was thinking of doing my homework in the living room. Did you, maybe, wanna share the space? It’s fine if not, I just thought…”

Zuko’s face relaxed a bit, and he smiled, looking almost relieved. “Yeah, I’d like that.”

So that was how they found themselves in the living room, Katara stretched across the couch with her laptop in her lap and her biochem textbook open on the coffee table, Zuko cross-legged on the floor with his laptop on the coffee table and stacks of printed articles scattered around it.

They worked well together, she realized, after half an hour passed in silence, passing Katara’s highlighters back and forth and sharing Zuko’s little sticky tabs. After awhile, though, Katara found herself distracted by the way he’d bite his pen, his brow furrowed as he examined one of the articles, and every so often, she’d look up to find him staring at her as she twirled one of her braids in concentration.

They both looked away immediately, so maybe it was just coincidence.

Katara caught sight of one of the articles on the table and squinted at it, the title having something to do with the Columbine shooting and _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_. “I don’t think I’ve asked you what your dissertation is even about.”

“That’s because up until about a week ago, you didn’t care because you hated me.”

Katara smirked. “That’s fair. Well, I’m asking now. I repeat, what’s your dissertation about?”

Zuko rubbed the back of his neck, his cheeks going a little pink. “Well, it’s kind of about a mix of things. I was a lit major for undergrad, so I started writing about children’s books and YA and how it correlated to different times in history, but then I realized I kind of had to broaden the scope a bit, and now it’s turned into a monster.”

That piqued Katara’s interest. YA books were her absolute favorites to read, and she devoured them, hence the stacks of them on her nightstand and piled on the floor of her bedroom. “Say more right now.”

“Really?” he asked, his eyebrow rising. “Most people usually tune out right about now.”

Katara frowned. Had people really told him to shut up about something that he seemed to have thought so deeply about? She wasn’t bored in the slightest. “Well, they’re idiots. If anything, I’m even more interested now. So go on.” She motioned to him with her hand to keep going.

Zuko gave a shy smile, setting down his pencil. “Okay, so it started out kind of simple because I knew the kids books that we grew up with are different than the ones being written now, which makes sense. But I wanted to see if there was a correlation between the specific subjects in times of history.”

He paused as though he expected her to interrupt, scanning her face, and once again she was hit by a wave of sadness as she realized that he was probably looking for any sign of boredom. What in the name of shitty interactions with people… She smiled at him to encourage him, and he smiled back, continuing, “So I started there, but then I realized I had to open it up because children’s books and YA are not made in a vacuum. They’re influenced by and inspire TV shows and movies. The popularity of _Harry Potter_ led to people actually looking at kids books like a viable market. _Twilight_ did the same with YA.” Zuko paused. "Even though JK Rowling is a horrendous TERF and Stephenie Meyer is racist as fuck. Can't forget about that."

"Oh, how the mighty fall." Katara nodded, the wheels turning in her head. “ _Twilight_ led to all those other vampire books series, right? Which all kind of flopped comparatively.”

Zuko nodded. “Yeah, exactly. None of them were as successful, and now the market is oversaturated, so people have stopped publishing vampire books as much. But it doesn’t stop there.”

Katara’s mouth twitched as she saw the light in his eyes and the way his words had started to spill out of his mouth. He was animated, his hands moving in the air as he talked. She’d always noticed, sometimes grudgingly, that Zuko was attractive, but the passion on his face smoldered, making his golden eyes glow. She was captivated.

Katara suddenly wanted to throttle every single person who had ever made him think this wasn’t fascinating, that _he_ wasn’t fascinating. 

Zuko continued, and she hoped he hadn’t noticed her staring. “So you know how I said books aren’t written in a vacuum? Well, music and TV and movies and other media influence what’s popular since young people take those in even more than they take in books, simply because they’re easier to consume than books sometimes. That’s why the use of social media has made its way into books as well.”

Katara’s eyes widened. “And media is influenced by current events a lot of the time.”

Zuko pointed at her. “Yes! Exactly. So that helps you create a timeline of what’s popular and why. So I’m kind of just placing different books in that timeline along with the context of other media.”

“Wait, so have you watched _Euphoria_?”

Zuko scoffed. “Of course I have. It’s brilliant.”

Fifteen minutes later, Katara and Zuko were deep into a _Euphoria_ rewatch. “So in this case, if we’re talking about your dissertation, _Euphoria_ is a good example of that history influencing the media and the way kids are growing up.”

Zuko nodded. “Yeah, I had to add a section on it, actually, since Gen Z has been super traumatized by the events of the Fire Nation, their development is being impacted. This is especially true about queerness, and queer kids. I have a section on that too, since it’s really important.”

“Through the lens of firsthand experience?” Katara supplied, fishing a bit for information, since she knew, from various conversations with Suki, that Zuko had been involved with men.

Zuko nodded, a bit bashfully. “Yeah. I know something about queer youth growing up traumatized.” 

Katara scoffed. “Are there any queer kids who don’t grow up traumatized?”

“If there are, I can’t find them.” Zuko shrugged. “Queer kids are said to be forced to grow up a lot faster, and that usually involves trauma forcing them to deal with things beyond their emotional maturity level. Hence why we tend to lose ourselves in the media we consume. It’s escapism.”

That rang with a bell with Katara, certainly. She laughed without humor. “Yeah, I know something about that.” She touched her necklace again, the stone cold against her palm. Gods knew that world events had traumatized her, and she remembered all the books and movies she’d devoured trying to escape. 

She continued, “Sokka and me...our mom died, and I had to grow up a little faster to fill her shoes, even though no one really could. It didn’t leave a lot of room for me to find myself, or explore my bisexuality. I’d never even kissed a girl until a year ago.”

Zuko smiled sadly. If he was surprised about her revelation of her sexuality, he didn’t show it. “I’m sorry about your mom. That’s something we have in common, in a way.”

“I’m sorry about yours.”

Zuko shook his head. “Don’t be. It’s kind of more complicated than that? I think I told you about it in the elevator that day. I thought she had died, for like ten years of my life. It wasn’t until two years ago that I found out she wasn’t, and it was my dad’s fault.”

Katara’s eyebrows nearly touched her hairline with how high they rose. She remembered that he’d hinted at it that day, but he hadn’t told her his dad was involved. “How does that even happen?”

He barked a laugh. “My dad is a manipulative psychopath who likes to play with my emotions, and he bullied my mom into leaving because she threatened to leave and take me and my sister, and he knew that would ruin his political career.” He rolled his eyes.

Katara bit the inside of her cheek. Suddenly, her grudge against him for his involvement with his family felt a lot more insensitive. Her cheeks burned with shame. “Huh. Well, then I’m sorry about your dad.”

“It’s okay. Therapy and shit has helped me a lot.” Zuko shrugged. “Now I’m only mildly an asshole.”

Katara laughed, even though it was sad. “It’s okay. So am I.”

“It’s the trauma then.”

“I guess it is.” This conversation had gone way off topic, so Katara brought it back, since she could tell they were both done talking about their trauma for the time being. “Well, I like your dissertation. I’d love to read it when it’s done.” 

Zuko’s eyes lit. “Really?” 

His voice dripped with disbelief, and a bolt of sadness once again shot through her. Who had beaten the self-esteem out of this _brilliant_ boy to the point where he couldn’t tell that someone was really truly fascinated by his work? “Duh, Zuko. I’d be mad if you didn’t let me read it after baiting me like this.”

“That’s fair.” Zuko grinned before asking, “Wait, so I’ve just talked your ear off about what I’m studying. What about you? You’re pre-med, right?”

It made her smile, the way he lowered the volume on the TV as he said it and turned to her fully, folding his hands in his lap and leaning towards her like there was no one in the world that he was as interested in as her. 

Katara understood his earlier hesitance now. She hadn’t really ever had to explain to anyone anything beyond pre-med because she’d had the same people in her life for years, people who knew her so they didn’t think about it beyond _Oh yeah, of course Katara wants to be a doctor. She loves helping people._ She never got to ramble on about how she felt about it. She and Zuko probably had that in common.

Was it wrong to want someone to want to understand her deeper than that? Was it wrong that of all people, that person suddenly might be Zuko?

Pushing past her hesitation, past her fear, past her insecurities, she dove in.

+++

The first thing Zuko noticed about Katara was the way her eyes glowed an even brighter blue when she was passionate about something. He’d seen the darker intensity of them when they’d fought, the way they sharpened in concentration when she was studying, but he had never seen them like this before, full of stars when she talked about something she loved.

“I’m pre-med, and I want to get into med school to be a family physician,” she explains, setting her laptop on the table as though she was afraid the force of her words would send it toppling off her lap. “I used to want to specialize in pediatric oncology, but that was before I realized I could do more as a general practitioner.”

He raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean? What made you decide that”

She smiled. “My mom was a nurse, and she worked at the free clinic in our village. They were always understaffed, always underfunded…” Katara bit her lip then, as though nervous to talk about this next part. “A lot of that was because of the ways the Fire Nation tried to colonize the South Pole. When they couldn’t, they drained a lot of natural resources around us. We’ve been rebuilding ever since.”

Zuko winced. “Yeah, I know about that. You don’t have to worry about talking to me about this. If I was squeamish about it, I wouldn’t be writing about how the Fire Nation’s imperialism and colonization of the world devastated a lot of the culture and led to the generational trauma of a lot of the world’s kids.”

Katara smiled, relieved. “Okay, then yeah, you know about it. While specializing is great and oncology is fascinating and everything, it wasn’t what my community needed when I was growing up, and I couldn’t ignore that, you know?”

Zuko nodded. His time around all kinds of people in Ba Sing Se had helped him realize the damage the Fire Nation, and his own _family_ , had done to the world, and that, along with finding out about his mom, was ultimately what had helped him make the final decision to leave the family name behind. “Seeing that need up close changes a person.” 

Katara nodded eagerly. “Exactly! I couldn’t help but imagine how I could be helpful, at underfunded clinics, how I could help whole families who needed care and couldn’t pay as much for it as other families could. And working at smaller clinics would mean I would really get to know the families, figure out what they need.”

“I imagine that clinics in marginalized communities don’t get to give that kind of attention, especially since they’re stretched thin as it is.”

“Yes, and it’s a huge issue when it comes to preventative care too. Clinics tend to focus on treatment because they just don’t have the bandwidth to catch illnesses before they get critical.” Katara’s chin tipped up, her jaw clenched tight, her eyes intense, and he was captivated by the force behind her gaze. “I want to do that, to give people what they need, to listen to them and help them before they get hurt. I will never, ever turn my back on people who need me, and I’ll do everything I can to help them, even if it means I have to work longer or work for less money. I don’t care. They’re more important than that.”

That kind of mission floored him. In his time floating in the spheres of rich people, he’d never met anyone who turned down the opportunity to make more money—not even doctors. It was the reason he’d started his undergrad majoring in business to please his father before he switched to literature senior year, having taken enough lit credits to qualify him for both degrees. To hear someone outright reject the idea of making more money in favor of helping the marginalized fucking floored him. 

“Katara, that’s...That’s really amazing. You know that?”

She scanned his face, as though wondering if he was being sarcastic, before she flushed a bit under his gaze. “You really think so?”

“Yeah. That’s really special. I know you must get that a lot, but—”

She shook her head. “I don’t actually.” She bit her lip. “So...thanks. For listening.”

Zuko gaped. “You just listened to me lecture you about books and you talked about _saving lives_. That’s _so_ much more exciting.”

Katara shook her head. “It’s the same amount of exciting, Zuko. Stories save lives, too. _We tell ourselves stories in order to live._ ”

It was embarrassing, the way his heart skipped several beats at that. “A doctor who reads Didion. Who knew?”

Katara smirked at him. “There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Rokura.”

Zuko hoped this sounded as smooth as he’d intended, and not like he’d lived and died a thousand times at the sight of those full, pouty lips quirked in that sly half-smile. “Well, Kuruk, there’s a lot I’d like to learn.” 

Katara settled back into the couch, crossing her legs demurely. He let his gaze linger on that for a minute before looking back up at her eyes, the playful gleam there making him grin. “I could say the same. Good thing we have all the time in the world.”

And Zuko planned to use every last second of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From now on, I'm going to be putting these in order of days of quarantine, so I can remember chronologically where we're at, and that's also the way I counted days in the beginning of quarantine lol.
> 
> All of Zuko's lit nerdness is basically me in undergrad, so I hope you enjoyed watching me nerd out vicariously through Zuko about children's media.
> 
> I hope y'all enjoyed that! Please leave me all your comments including constructive criticism, and kudos are lovely as well. I love y'all and I'll see you next week!


	5. we're the only ones left

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Katara fails at being human, and Zuko offers a solution in the form of a home-cooked meal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello friends! First off, I just wanted to say THANK YOU SO MUCH for all the love and support you gave to "this is right where it begins." It was such a joy to write, and to see that y'all loved it as much as I did warmed my little angst-ridden, Halsey-loving, zutara-shipping heart. I'll try to have more oneshots for you in the future in March, since I'll be attempting to update twice a week when my day job gets a little less hectic. 
> 
> I don't own ATLA or "The Mother We Share" by CHVRCHES, even though I wish I did because it's such a great zk song and I don't see it on zutara playlists enough. I also don't own any of the pop culture references I make.

the way is long,  
but you can make it easy on me.

—CHVRCHES, "the mother we share"

**DAY 5**

It only took a few days of living with her to make Zuko realize that Katara is shit at taking care of herself.

This was surprising given her ability to care for the people around her, but now that she wasn’t forced to pick up after Sokka or goad Aang into doing his homework on time or watching Toph to make sure she didn’t get into fights with bigoted frat bros on campus, it seemed that her true form had emerged, and that version of her refused to do what was good for her.

He didn’t notice at first because he TAs two classes three days a week and has office hours for the other two days, while playing Pai Sho with the newly revised Jasmine Dragon schedule everywhere in between, but by the end of the week, he and Katara had been tripping over each other enough for him to realize there’s a pattern in the way she does—and does not—care for herself.

First of all, Katara apparently lived on coffee and cereal and lychee nuts like some kind of over-caffeinated lemur. In the five business days he had lived here, he had never seen her eat an actual lunch. He imagined that while going to physical classes, she might have made more of an effort to grab something for lunch on the way to her (apparently back to back, especially on MWF) classes, but now that their classes have gone entirely virtual, she apparently thought not running all over campus every day meant she didn’t need three square meals.

Zuko did not agree, judging by the way she’d often snap at him for listening to lectures too loud on her way to grab a handful of peanut M&Ms from the candy stash in the fridge. 

Second of all, she apparently had no idea how to relax. Once again, he had only been here a few days, but in that time, he hadn’t seen her do anything but attend class and do homework, and he’d never seen her actually go to sleep. The only evidence of her going to bed was when she emerged in the morning with (endearingly messy) bedhead and a scowl at him in the living room on the way to the coffee pot.

So on the first Friday of quarantine, Zuko had decided he’d had enough of this hangry ghost that stomped around the apartment in between classes muttering to herself and disappeared into her textbooks for hours until she emerged in the evening grumpy with a headache and made herself a pitiful meal of instant noodles with mushrooms thrown in as a vegetable. He wondered if Sokka had ever had to deal with this behavior, but then he remembered that he often waxed poetic about his sister’s cooking, and he realized that maybe Katara’s kindness didn’t always extend to herself.

So that Friday, Zuko came home from work and did their usual decontamination routine before making his way to the shower. Katara’s door was closed, her study music playlist (which as far as he knew contained only the _Ratatouille_ score, Explosions in the Sky’s entire discography, and inexplicably the _Prince of Egypt_ soundtrack) muffled through the wood, and he figured she must still be working on problem sets or study guides or whatever the hell STEM majors did between classes, so he knew he had a bit of time to put his plan into action.

Zuko didn’t quite know her dietary restrictions, other than she preferred oat milk in her coffee but still ate regular dairy products otherwise, so he figured grilled cheese and tomato soup would be a safe bet. It was one of his mother’s comfort meals, one he’d recently become reacquainted with after having been away from her for ten years, so he was glad to have a chance to break out the recipe again. 

When had he turned into Uncle, actually enjoying making food for other people? Three years ago, he’d barely been able to feed himself, much less anyone else. Days spent in bed asleep, and hours awake but unable to stomach anything because of the rage and sadness festering inside of him, had left him malnourished as fuck until he started working at the Jasmine Dragon and Uncle had made it his personal mission to mother-hen Zuko back to life.

And it had worked, funnily enough. Hence why Zuko was now here, roasting tomatoes and garlic for soup to feed the pre-med shut-in who’d been his only constant companion. 

While he was putting together the grilled cheese, he put in his headphones (which Katara had loudly praised him for because now it meant she’d get to sleep past eight AM most days of the week) and called his mother. Before all this, he’d been planning to visit her and his half-sister Kiyi after he’d settled into his new place, but the pandemic had thrown a wrench into that plan.

So Facetime would have to do.

“Zuzu!” Kiyi’s face took up the whole screen, her toothy grin making him smile too. 

“Hey Kiyi. What are you doing with your mom’s phone?” he asked, propping his phone up against the spice jars lined up along the counter’s backsplash.

“Mommy is making dinner and she didn’t get here fast enough, so I helped!” she chirped, and there was a muffled sound as the phone went to the side and the sound of Kiyi’s pattering footsteps filled his ears. He used the time to put the tomatoes and garlic in the food processor. “Mommy! It’s Zuko!”

Zuko was subjected to the vertigo-inducing motion of a phone changing hands before Ursa’s face came on screen. “Ikem, take over the udon, would you?” she said to his step-father off-screen before she turned to him, her face brightening. “Zuko, how are you? Is everything okay?”

He chuckled. “Why do you always ask that?”

“We’re in a global pandemic, I think I have even more of a reason to ask it now—”

“Yeah, Zuzu, we’re in a panopticon!” Kiyi yelled, waving her arms as she hopped up to reach the screen.

“Where did you even learn that word? Most of my students don’t even know what that means—”

“Ikem taught her, but she’s just been using any p-word she can think of instead of ‘pandemic’ for some reason.”

Zuko raised an eyebrow as he poured the contents of the food processor into the pot and added water, bringing it all to a boil. “Has she been watching TikTok lately?”

“Come to think of it, she has, so maybe that’s it.” Ursa hummed thoughtfully. “Anyway, how are you? How’s the new apartment? Your classes? Your sister?”

He made a face as he stirred the soup. “I haven’t talked to Azula since I moved here, so I don’t know. Classes are virtual, so that’s good. And the new apartment is...well, a new apartment.”

“My my, those are some lovely details you’ve given me,” she said, frowning good-naturedly.

He smiled and shook his head. “I don’t have much more than that to say other than I haven’t left the house in days save for going to work. What about you all?”

“Oh you know, we’re settling in. My class is virtual, and Ikem isn’t performing anymore, so we’re both stuck in the house. I’m teaching from here, and Kiyi doesn’t mind virtual school, but she pitched a fit at the idea of not being able to go to karate anymore.” Ursa chuckled. “She has a temper to rival Azula’s, so I’m also disappointed she can’t burn off the excess energy.”

“I don’t think anyone can rival Azula’s temper.” Zuko couldn’t help but think that maybe Ozai’s could, and judging by the sadness that flitted across Ursa’s face, she was thinking the same thing.

She didn’t say it exactly, but it came out as “How’s your sister, really?”

“Why don’t you ask her yourself? You have her number.”

“You know she won’t answer.”

He did know that. Zuko sighed as he started assembling the sandwiches, buttering one and laying it in the pan. “She called me while I was moving out, but I didn’t answer. She hadn’t exactly been...supportive of me leaving, so I just didn’t want to deal with it.”

Saying Azula hadn’t been supportive was generous. They hadn’t ever been close, but their mother’s leaving, Zuko’s injury, and the last eight years their father had been in office had driven them miles apart, even after they’d moved to Ba Sing Se together so they could go to BSSU while learning the ropes at the Ba Sing Se chapter of their family’s company. Zuko making the choice to denounce his father’s company and change his last name to their mother’s last name had been the final straw.

“I always knew you were weak, brother, but I never expected you to go crawling back to her. How could you betray me like this, after everything she’s done?” Azula had yelled, angry unshed tears in her eyes, when he’d told her, the noise shaking the walls of their penthouse apartment. 

It had been the biggest fight they’d ever had, and they’d screamed at each other for hours, until the night security guard timidly knocked on the door and asked them to quiet down because some tenants were threatening to call the Dai Li. When it was over, the floor littered with debris from the things she’d thrown at him, she’d locked herself in her room and he’d packed a bag, leaving to stay with Iroh until he got the okay from Sokka and Toph that he could move into the apartment.

It had been a rough two weeks. He really didn’t want to hear anything Azula had to say right now.

Ursa’s mouth twisted into a sympathetic frown. “You’re going to have to talk to her eventually. She’s your little sister. You need each other, especially with...with him.”

“Azula can handle herself, and him. He’s always liked her better anyway. I’m done dealing with it. If she wants to keep in contact with him, she can, but I’m over it.” Zuko focused on stirring the soup again so Ursa wouldn’t see his face.

Ursa’s brow furrowed, and she opened her mouth to respond, but then Kiyi hopped up into the frame again, pointing at the screen. “Zuzu, who’s that?”

Zuko almost cracked his neck looking behind him, and he jumped a little seeing Katara in the doorway, giving him a bemused look. He gave her a wave with a spatula, motioning to his headphones. “That’s Katara.”

“Is she your girlfriend?” Kiyi asked. “She’s really pretty.”

Zuko flushed at that, and Katara smirked even though he was sure she couldn’t hear this. “Um, no, she’s not, but I mean, yeah, she is—I’ll talk to you guys later, okay?” 

He turned back to see Ursa hoisting Kiyi into her arms and adjusting the camera to show them both. “Have a good night, Zuko. Call your sister!”

“Bye Zuzu, bye Katara!” Kiyi yelled, waving wildly.

Zuko ended the call, taking his headphones out and dropping them on the counter before turning back to her. “Kiyi says hi.”

“Your half-sister? How are they, by the way?” Katara asked kindly, leaning against the wall. She still had her hair loops in, but the rest of her hair was scraped back in a messy bun, an oversized flannel thrown over her tank top and coming down past her cotton shorts. 

Zuko swallowed, his mouth dry, and turned back to the sandwich that was on the edge of burning. Oh well, that would be his. It was his fault for getting distracted by his unfairly pretty roommate. Kiyi hadn’t been off the mark there. “They’re alright, dealing with it. Kiyi is going to drive my mom up a wall without karate, so it’ll be interesting to see how that plays out.”

Katara hummed, and he felt her come up behind him and peek over his shoulder, her sudden warmth making him jump a bit. She chuckled a bit, like him being so on edge amused her. “What are you doing?”

“Making dinner.”

“It smells good.”

Zuko smiled at how suspicious she sounded, putting the other sandwich on the stove and stirring the soup again. “I think anything would smell good to you right now, since you’ve apparently been subsisting on nothing but coffee and granola bars like some sparrowkeet. I thought you needed an actual hot meal, since this is the first time I’ve seen you out of your room all day.”

“I came out for more coffee while you were at work. You don’t have to cook for me,” Katara insisted. “I’m not a baby. I can cook for myself.”

Zuko rolled his eyes. He’d never met anyone so adverse to human kindness. “I don’t have to do anything. I need to eat, so the least I could do is make sure you eat too. It won’t kill you to let someone do something for you every once in a while.”

She was quiet, and he chanced a glance at her. Her blue eyes were narrowed in concentration, and her lips were pursed. It was almost cute, how utterly perplexed she looked, and “cute” was never a word he’d ever associated with Katara before. He shouldn’t get used to it because he knew she’d flay him alive if he ever uttered it to her face, but the fuzzy socks she was wearing with penguins on them really didn’t help.

“You really made me dinner? And you didn’t poison it?”

“Would you actually believe me if I said no?”

Her mouth twitched, and she said, “No. But it smells good enough that I’ll take a chance on it anyway.”

Even through the joke, her face seemed to have relaxed at the idea that she didn’t have to cook for herself tonight, and he was relieved that she wasn’t going to fight him on this. “This is almost ready, so if you really want to do something, can you get some plates out?”

Katara gave him a small smile, her eyes softening, and said, “Sure.” 

Then she touched his shoulder, squeezing a bit, and then murmured, “Thanks, Zuko.”

The quiet fondness lacing the syllables made his chest feel warm, and as he watched her glide around the kitchen setting the table, humming an old Water Tribe song, he thought maybe he could get to used to this, to her smile and the easy way she touched him, to the feeling that maybe now they’re finally on the same team.

+++

The first thing Katara noticed was how great Zuko was at taking care of himself.

It was possible that he wasn’t that great, and Katara had just gotten used to the labor-intensive routine that came with living with Sokka and parenting the rest of their little group. Either way, she wasn’t complaining.

The second thing she noticed, however, was the fact that she had no idea what to do with herself now that her in-person mothering of the group had been cut short, so her routine had been smashed to smithereens.

All her life, she had had something to do, whether that was work, chores, taking care of Gran Gran while her father worked, or babysitting the children of her tribe while their parents worked. When Sokka started at BSSU and they moved to Ba Sing Se, Katara immediately picked up the mantle as woman of the house while Sokka went to school and worked his part-time job. She’d met Aang soon after, befriending him as they discovered he’d lived close by with his guardian, Monk Gyatso. With Aang came Toph, the wayward rich kid who couldn’t stand her family, so she made her way into Katara’s.

Just like that, Katara had another tribe to take care. Aang and Toph were irresponsible and lowkey catastrophic together, and Sokka’s learned helplessness (Katara will never forgive herself for that) meant he couldn’t run a washing machine without dyeing everything in it pink, so Katara slipped right into her role as the mom friend of their group. This was fine, ultimately. It was what she was used to, and she didn’t think she’d ever be okay trusting anyone else to do it. 

So now the pandemic has severed her from her makeshift children, Katara had no idea what to do with all this time on her hands. Now that she couldn’t work, study with Aang at all hours, or stop Toph from hustling the more dangerous ableist jerks on campus out of their money, she had at least figured she could busy herself with housework, regardless of her new roommate.

Katara was wrong.

For the last four days that Zuko had been living here, she’d emerge from her room every day to find a new part of the house clean. If she was stuck in classes for hours on end, long after he’d left for work, she’d come out expecting to clean the kitchen, only to find no dishes in the sink, not even her own, and a spotless tabletop and counter. If she’d fall into a vortex of time with her Calc II problem set, she’d emerge from her room to find the bathroom clean and a showered and peaceful Zuko at the kitchen table working on his dissertation quietly. So she’d go back to her room, unsure what to do with herself, and keep studying, now completely shook.

Katara had never attempted something and not been good at it, and if she did, she just stopped doing it altogether. Call it perfectionism, call it gifted-kid syndrome, but Katara had never not been good at things. It was weird, being in a pandemic and having no one to take care of but yourself, because it made her realize she was horrendously bad at two things: pandemic living and self-care.

Thanks to not having to work and nothing to rely on for time-keeping but her virtual classes, which she didn’t have to commute for, Katara had found her internal body clock completely screwed up. She went to bed late since she didn’t have to wake up early to meet Aang before class, and she’d forget to eat between classes because she didn’t have to meet Toph or Aang or grab a bite between office hours with her professors.

She didn’t forget to shower though, so points to her for that, at least!

Katara was starting to panic a bit. She knew she needed to find a new routine, and fast, but how was she supposed to do that when her surprisingly self-sufficient roommate was taking away all her coping mechanisms?!

It wasn’t until she emerged from her rabbit hole on Friday to find Zuko making food for the both of them that she realized that maybe this wasn’t so bad after all.

“Oh spirits, this is good.” Katara swallowed her bite of the grilled cheese, and sipping one end into the soup, she pointed the sandwich at him. “Where did you learn to make this?” she demanded.

Zuko smiled, swallowing his own bite. “My mom, actually. She used to make this for me and my sister when we were kids.”

“Huh.” Katara chewed her bite before asking, “Is it weird that I’m surprised by that?”

Zuko raised an eyebrow. “Why? Did you think we’d have servants all the time or something?”

Katara shrugged guiltily. “I mean, your family was even richer than Toph’s so...can you blame me?”

Zuko shook his head, his silky hair swingin in his eyes. “Nope, I guess not. My mom liked to be the one to cook for us when she was around. We had people to clean the house and stuff, since it was, you know, too big to keep up with”—he blushed at her look—“but she liked to cook, so we didn’t have, like, a personal chef. Azula does now, but I hated to ask him to make stuff for me, so when we lived together, I mostly just cooked for myself, and my uncle liked to have me over for dinner and stuff sometimes, so it was fine.”

The wheels were turning in Katara’s head. “So where did you learn to clean, then? If you had, you know, people to do that for you.”

Zuko smirked. “Ah, so that’s it.”

“That’s what?” 

“Did you think when I moved in that you’d be getting some spoiled rich kid who didn’t know how to clean up after himself?”

“No!” Katara cringed and dropped her eyes to the table, dipping her sandwich again and taking a bite to avoid looking at him. “Well, okay, yeah. Maybe.”

Zuko laughed. “Well, when Azula and I moved here, I was already over the spoiled rich kid lifestyle of having someone else wash my socks and clean the toilet, so I didn’t let the staff touch my part of the house, and I’ve always been a neat person, so…” Zuko shrugged, taking another bite of his sandwich.

Katara’s brows rose impossibly high on her forehead. Ah, so he wasn’t out to steal her job as janitor of the house. He was genuinely just used to picking up after himself. That was surprising, and refreshing after twenty-one years of tripping over Sokka’s shoes and doing laundry for two. “So you’re not just trying to beat me at my own game.”

Zuko choked on his sandwich and laughed so hard he had to take a sip of whatever to get it down. “Is that what you thought? The idea of me trying to show you up was more likely than the idea of me maybe knowing how to take care of myself and not being a total slob?”

It was Katara’s turn to blush. “No...maybe. I clean as a coping mechanism, okay?! You try living with Sokka your whole life and see what that does to you.”

Zuko made a face. “No thank you. I’ve been to the gym with that guy, so I can’t even imagine what it’s like to have to live with the smell of his laundry all the time.”

Katara scowled, taking another bite of his sandwich. “Imagine being the one to have to wash it all the time.”

Zuko cringed. “Gross. Well, um, I hope this goes without saying, but I hope you know already that you’re not doing my laundry.”

“Not in a million years.” Katara smirked and shook her head. “Sorry for being suspicious, I guess. I’m just not used to...well, to this.” Katara waved a hand at their now empty plates.

“Well, maybe you should. I’ve never had anyone to cook for, so this was nice.” He smiled at her shily, and she returned it. “Maybe I can do it again sometime?”

“You want to cook for me?” she asked, her voice softer than she’d like it to be.

“I mean, someone has to. You can’t survive on coffee and M&Ms alone.” He raised his eyebrow again.

Katara scowled. Of course he’d noticed her inability to be a human sometimes. “My routine has been a little thrown off since quarantine began, and I haven’t been able to get it on track. I’m working on it, okay?”

Zuko held up his hands in surrender. “Don’t look at me. I’m not judging you. We’re in a pandemic. I don’t think any of us has our shit together right now.” He gave her a sad smile then. “Maybe we don’t have to though. I mean, you should eat obviously, but...cut yourself a little slack. It’s hard enough to exist right now. The last thing we need is us trying to bully ourselves into a schedule.”

“You seem to have one.”

“Are you kidding? The Jasmine Dragon hours are kicking my ass, and I’m still trying to figure out how to get everything together.” Zuko ran his hand through his hair, making it stick up a bit. It was almost cute, if Katara had let herself associate that word with him. “The only reason I’m not having a harder time is because it’s not like I had a booming social life before the pandemic, at least not before I met Sokka and Suki.”

That was surprising. As big an asshole as he used to be, she had thought he’d at least had his own friends who tolerated him. “I thought you dated that scary-looking girl who hung out with your sister and her perky friend with the long braid.”

Zuko smiled. “Mai and I are no longer a thing, and most of my friends were Azula’s friends so...before Sokka and Suki, before the group, I—well, I had never really had close friends before.” He rubbed the back of his neck, avoiding her eyes.

Katara’s heart melted. Suddenly his constant presence around their group made much more sense. He was _lonely_ , and she had always been a little lonely too, even with a loving family and a close, if not a little chaotic, group of friends. Without their gang, he was probably as lost as she was. “This pandemic has really done a number on us socially, hasn’t it?”

“Yeah, you could say that.” Zuko chuckled before fixing her with a soft, genuine smile. “But, um, maybe it doesn’t have to be so difficult? With the two of us, living together, and stuff.”

Katara smiled, raising her eyebrows. “Zuko, are you saying you want to hang out with me?”

He flushed again, that pretty pink she was enjoying drawing out in him more and more. “Well, I mean, if you don’t, that’s fine, I just thought—”

“Well, you live here, so...I think I can make time for you.” She smiled before remembering, “Oh! But if you’re doing the cooking, then I’m taking care of cleanup. Like I said, it’s therapeutic for me, and it’s only fair.”

He hummed thoughtfully, stroking his chin like he had a beard. “I’ll let you take care of kitchen cleanup, but we need to find a system for everything because I’m not letting you clean the whole house by yourself.”

She grinned. No one had ever fought her for chores before, and it made her feel giddy. “Fine. We’ll work something out along with our starter schedule.”

“Deal.” He held out his hand, and they shook on it.

His palm was warm and calloused, and if Katara lingered just a little longer than she usually would, nobody had to know. Pulling back, she smiled before remembering the true-crime podcast she’d heard him listening to awhile ago and offering, “After I take care of the dishes...there’s a new docu-series on Netflix about the Night Stalker. Do you want to binge it with me?”

“Absolutely.” Zuko grinned wolfishly. “A girl after my own heart.”

Her own skipped a beat as he started picking up the empty dishes, his and hers, to take them to the sink. Tui, her standards for living companions had been so low. 

Or maybe Zuko was just _that_ good.

+++

SOKKA: ROLE CALL BITCHES IT'S TIME FOR A ZOOM

SUKI: babe, there's no need to yell  
SUKI: but yes, is everyone down for a zoom call tomorrow??

TOPH: sure, ask the blind girl for a video call  
TOPH: but yea I'm free

SUKI: oops sorry toph  
SUKI: the offer still stands for an audio call tho

TOPH: suki, accessibility queen

ZUKO: I'm down 

KATARA: ^^same

AANG: I'm excited! this should be fun

TOPH: or a total mess  
TOPH: either way  
TOPH: i miss you and stuff I guess

KATARA: aww you miss us?

ZUKO: how embarrassing for you

TOPH: middle finger emoji  
TOPH: GODDAMMIT stupid voice to text feature  
TOPH: you nerds know what i mean  
TOPH: Fuck you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There you have it! Who's ready for a Gaang zoom call?? Thanks again for reading, and please leave your comments and kudos below! They are FUEL. I'll see you next Tuesday with another update, and I love y'all sooo much!


	6. i want to know those parts of you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Gaang has a video call, Zuko has a nightmare, and Katara is there to help.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hiiieee! I'm back with a new chapter. The first Gaang video call is here, y'all! I'm so excited for this one, and I had a ton of fun writing it. I struggled a bit with Zuko's nightmare, so let me know if y'all liked it or hate it or how I can improve. Other than that, I'll see y'all in the comments!
> 
> Enjoy!

even after all this time,  
just know you've got nothing to hide.

—SOPHIE, "it's okay to cry"

**DAY 6**

“Does this work?”

“Nope, it’s still only getting my boobs.” 

“I’m not going to comment on that. What about now?” Zuko carefully lifted his laptop and put one of his dictionaries underneath.

Katara squinted at the laptop perched precariously on a tall stack of books on the coffee table. Her image in the Google meets preview screen was still too low. Though Sokka had said Zoom, none of them wanted to fork out for a subscription, so they were all using Google meets to get out of being cut off after fifty minutes or shelling out a bunch of money for glorified Facetime. 

“Still too low,” Katara sighed. 

Zuko looked down at the pile of books on the coffee table. “Maybe this Rumi collection will work,” he said, selecting it. “Wait, is this yours?”

“Yeah, I think yours is the bigger one.”

“It’s sticky-tabbed as hell. Didn’t know you were a romantic,” he marveled, giving her a smirk. “It makes sense.”

Katara pouted. “So what if I am? Shut up and put the book.”

He chuckled, putting it down on the stack and replacing the laptop. “What about now?”

Katara grinned, seeing just the right amount of space about her head. “Okay, I’m in! Now you.”

He gave over to the couch and sat down. Peering at the screen, and his and Katara’s images reflected perfectly, he said, “Yes, got it!”

Hitting the button to enter the call, Katara held up her hand, and he looked surprised as she did, hesitating a bit before high-fiving her. “We did it.”

“Teamwork.” He grinned again. “So you’re a romantic.”

Katara rolled her eyes. “Everyone’s a romantic if you’ve been hurt enough.”

His grin softened. “ _I’m in love and now you’ve made a fool of me._ ”

Katara’s heart ached at that, and she nudged his shoulder with hers. “Alright, Bukowski, quiet down now.”

Zuko laughed, pressing back against her, and Katara grinned.

And of course, Sokka had to ruin it.

“Whaaa?” Sokka’s shriek startled them both, and they both turned to the computer to see Sokka and Suki had entered the call. “Is that Señor Surly _laughing_? Katara, did you poison him?”

Sokka pushed his face closer to the camera, wide eyed, and there was a shuffle as Suki pulled him back. 

“Oh, leave them alone. Hi guys,” Suki said, waving.

“Hi, Suki. Smack my brother for me.” Katara glared at him. “It’s been too long since he’s been slapped around.”

Zuko settled back into the couch, frowning at them. “Give him one for me too.”

“Hey am I late?” Aang’s window popped up, showing the side of his bed, before he popped into the frame, his smile wide as he waved and sat in front of it. “Sorry, Appa knocked my setup over so I had to re-stack everything.”

As if on cue, Appa’s large white fluff came into frame, yawning as he lumbered up to Aang and settled into his side.

“Okay, yeah, Appa’s all well and good, but show me Momo!” Sokka shouted, leaning closer to the screen and making Katara wince at the feedback it caused. “Momo, I miss you, buddy!”

Suddenly, there was a chirp-like meow and then a “No, Momo!—” before a loud muffling filled the speakers and the picture blurred, snapping to black.

“Oh, way to go, Sokka. Now we’ve lost Aang!” Katara narrowed her eyes and internally bemoaned the fact that the virtual connection made it lose some of its potency.

“I’m right here, guys!” The phone righted itself, and Aang was back, this time with Appa on one side and Momo on the other, busy with a toy that appeared to have some kind of catnip inside it. “Hey, where’s Toph?”

“I’m right here, assholes.” In the melee, Katara hadn’t seen Toph’s square pop up, her icon a picture of her with her milky eyes widened maniacally and her index fingers pulling the corners of her mouth apart in a leery grin. “I’m trying to set this shit up, so enjoy the feedback.”

As if to prove her point, there was a loud metallic bang and Toph’s “Fuck!”

“We should get a cat,” Sokka mused, tapping his chin and stroking an invisible beard.

Suki grimaced, and Katara decided to kill that line of thought before it had time to take route. “Absolutely not. Suki is going to end up taking care of it, and you know it. You can’t even wash your own socks.”

“Actually, he’s been handling the washing machine pretty okay once I showed him how it worked. Our clothes have all made it out alive, so progress!” Suki said.

A pang shot through Katara’s chest at that. Had he always been able to learn and just didn’t because he knew she’d do it for him? Or because he knew she needed to feel needed? Either way, this _sucked_. 

“Aha! Got it.” Suddenly, Toph’s square flickered to life. Only the left side of her head was in frame, a green wall behind her and the top of something brassy skimming the bottom.

“Toph, you’re not really in the video,” Aang pointed out charitably. “Move it a little to the left.”

“Ah, shit. Hold on.” A hand shot in front of the screen and moved it to the right. Now none of Toph was showing. “Is that better?”

“Um, no, I meant our left, not yours. It’s your right, my bad.” Even on video, Aang’s flush was fluorescent as he rubbed a hand over his shaved head. 

“Why didn’t you just say that?” Toph whined, moving the phone again. “There.”

Now she was finally all in frame, and Katara could see she was sitting behind her drum kit. “That’s good. Wait, where are you?”

Toph grinned. “I’m in my new cave!” She threw her hands out. “Now that my parents are working from home, they’re around all the time, and they really don’t appreciate my drumming talent.”

Her eyes were gleaming and her grin was all teeth, so Katara felt like maybe this was now a point of pride for her. “So they moved me to the backyard and built me a shed for my kit and my pottery stuff. Look! Siri, flip camera.”

The picture flipped, and sure enough, a brand new, fully furnished space complete with a couch and a rug and floor cushions sat on the other side of the room. Almost off-frame, Toph’s pottery wheel and supplies sat in the corner.

“Siri, flip camera.” Toph’s grinning face came back into view.

“How are you holding us right now? Pure spite?” Zuko asked curiously.

“Nope, but I haven’t tried that, so maybe. My parents also got me a ring light and a phone stand yesterday because the more time I spend talking to you, the less I spend talking to them. Everyone wins.”

“So you’re just going to hermit out in your backyard?” Katara asked.

“As soon as I get the mini-fridge, hell yeah. I’m going to start making tiktoks of my drumming since all the battles are cancelled for this year.” Her smile was sharp. “I’m gonna beat the asses of all the drummers in the Earth Kingdom without even leaving my shed.”

“If anyone could do it, it’s you, Toph. I believe in you,” Aang encouraged.

“Remember us when you get on drumming tiktok,” Suki said.

“Not a chance, Warrior Queen. I’m going to get famous and stop talking to all of you.”

“Aang, how is Algebra 2?” Katara asked. “Did the notes I sent you help?”

Aang beamed. “Yeah, they really did! I got an A on my midterm. Thanks, Katara. You’re a really great teacher!”

“You’re welcome.” Katara smiled back. For all the work it took to get Aang to pay attention to his studies, he was an incredibly gifted student. With a little cajoling, he picked the material up quickly. Katara was jealous of him in that regard, even though she’d never admit it, not when they were dating and certainly not now.

“Are we really going to talk about homework right now?” Sokka whined. “I haven’t seen any of you in seventeen years!”

“You’re such a drama queen, Sokka—”

“Pot, kettle, sis,” Sokka interrupted her. 

“None of us have any news other than the horrible shit that’s in the news,” Toph interjected.

Aang appeared to be thinking. “Monk Gyatso is teaching me to play Pai Sho. He says I’m getting really good! And I taught Appa how to play dead. See? Appa, yip yip!” 

He gestured down at Appa, who picked his head up and gazed at him with big, sleepy eyes. He let out a loud, roaring yawn and settled his head back on his paws, falling asleep. “Aww, he did it this morning!”

“We believe you, buddy. We’ll check in on your progress on the next call.” Sokka shook his head. “Anyway, what’s the gossip? Spill the tea.”

“My uncle hates that phrase—”

“Wait, Sparky, how’s your uncle?” Toph asked. “I’ve been texting him, but he always insists he’s fine.”

“You text my uncle?” Zuko asked. “Of course you do.”

“Duh, Sparky. The owners of the Jasmine Dragon need to be in constant communication.”

“You own the Jasmine Dragon?” Suki asked, her eyes wide.

“You bet. I’m Sparky’s boss now.” Toph grinned at the screen. “I own half the shares of the Jasmine Dragon now. I thought Iroh would be a harder sell since he loves that place almost as much as he loves Zuko, but apparently he thinks I’m a “clever and wise businesswoman.’”

Zuko groaned. “So that’s why he’s not worried about having to shorten the hours to the shop. Toph, you fucking capitalist.”

“Taking advantage of an old man in a pandemic. I taught you well,” Sokka said, pressing his clasped hands to his heart and wiping away an invisible tear.

“I think it’s nice. Iroh gets to work shorter hours and you get to save a small business during a global pandemic,” Aang offered, scratching Momo behind the ears.

“Call me ‘nice’ again and I’ll break your kneecaps with my cane.”

“And there she is,” Katara deadpanned.

“So,” Suki started, “Kyoshi and Rangi started a TikTok to raise money for the studio. You should go follow them.”

Katara and Zuko both gaped at them. “What? Say more right now!” Katara demanded.

She was mature enough to admit that she had a slight (or _huge_ ) crush on both Madame Kyoshi and her wife. What sane women-loving-person wouldn’t?

“It’s self-defense mostly, to draw attention to the GoFundMe.” Suki gave a wolfish grin. “If you ask the girls and I, it’s just an excuse for Rangi to bully Kyoshi on camera and for Kyoshi to make eyes at Rangi while she demonstrates the stances.”

“Ugh, that’s so hot,” Toph sighed. “They both sound hot. They can take all my money.”

“Mine too,” Katara sighed. 

“I’ll tell them this info is well-received,” Suki laughed. “Morale is low right now, obviously, so any good news is an improvement.”

“They don’t even like to hear the haikus I write anymore,” Sokka complained.

“Babe, they never liked to hear them,” Suki said gently, patting Sokka on the shoulder.

“Awww,” Sokka whined. “Babe!”

“At least she said it nicely. I would’ve just said you sucked,” Toph said, shrugging. “So what’s new with you, Sugar Queen? Did Jet hit you up for cyber sex yet?”

Katara’s eyes widened, and Zuko choked on a sip of his water. “What?” Katara squeaked.

Suki smiled with a bit of chagrin. “I might have told Toph that Jet texted me asking about you.”

“Wait, why didn’t he text me?” Sokka asked, indignant.

“He knew you’d get mad and tell him to fuck off.”

Sokka sniffed and turned up his nose. “Well, yeah, but it still hurts to not be considered.”

“Wait, you dated Jet?” Zuko asked, and Katara reluctantly turned to Zuko, her face flushing. She didn’t know why she was incredibly uncomfortable with having this conversation around him, but spirits, she wanted the ground to open up and swallow her whole. 

“Um, yes?” Katara squeaked.

Toph surprised everyone by cackling madly, slapping her knees. “Fuck, Sweetness, don’t act so squeamish about it. You’re not the only one on this call who’s done the dirty with Jet.”

Katara blinked. Did she mean— “ _You_ dated Jet?” she blurted.

Now it was Zuko’s turn to blush, pink spreading from his neck up his cheeks and reaching his ears. “We might’ve dated for a few months a year ago. I was in a bad place in my life, and he—understood me, I guess.”

Katara couldn’t help but give him a sympathetic smile about that. “He has that effect on people, yeah.”

“Wait, so you guys are sausage siblings and you didn’t even know?” Sokka gaped.

Suki smacked him on the shoulder as Toph gave another howling laugh and Aang blushed and rubbed the back of his neck. 

Katara gritted her teeth, and Zuko looked like he wanted to be struck by lightning. “We haven’t exactly had that conversation yet.”

“Just how many conversations have you had?” Toph asked, giving them a shit-eating smile. 

“Yeah, no offense, Katara, but I thought you’d have murdered Zuko by now and passed it off as death by corona,” Sokka mentioned, raising an eyebrow.

Katara scoffed. “Shut up, Sokka.”

“So has the new arrangement been going well?” Suki asked affably, giving Sokka a sharp look before fixing Katara and Zuko a hopeful expression.

Katara slid her eyes over to Zuko to find him giving her a shy smile, the tips of his ears still a little pink.

“I’m having a good time,” Zuko said. “Katara?”

She couldn’t help but smile. “You’re alright, I guess.”

+++

That night as he prepared for bed, Zuko was still riding the high of the group’s banter and the gift of Katara’s soft, kind smile and bright eyes, so when his phone rang, he didn’t think twice about answering it without looking. After all, what could possibly ruin his good mood tonight?

As always, though, the universe gave Zuko one good thing and one absolutely disastrous, horrible thing.

“Oh Zuzu, you picked up. I started to think you’d been killed by coronavirus.”

Azula’s cold, casual voice made him shudder, and he dropped heavily onto his bed. “What do you want, Azula?”

“Now now, brother, is that anyway to talk to me after you left me here to rot during a global pandemic?”

“Really? That’s the angle you’re going to play, Azula? I didn’t even know about the pandemic when I left.”

“Well, still, haven’t you been worrying about me?”

He had been, but she didn’t need to know that. “Why would I? According to you, I’m the weak one of us, so aren’t I the one you should be worried about?”

“Hmm, well, I’d rather not waste time worrying. That’s why I’m calling to tell you it’s time to come home. Haven’t you had enough of this little game you call self-discovery?”

Zuko felt himself going numb. This was exactly why he shouldn’t have answered the phone without looking. Of course she’d want him back now that he’d already gotten comfortable somewhere else, with a life far from hers that she couldn’t control. “You mean the little game of not wanting to be dependent on our abuser for my life needs? Yeah, no, I’m not done, thanks.”

Azula gave a world-weary sigh. “You’ve always been so dramatic. He’s not abusive, you were just insubordinate.”

After all these years, you would think Zuko would be used to her denial of their father’s treatment of them, but it still stung like a slap—or a burn, he thought bitterly—to the face. “If that’s what you need to tell yourself to get through your life, Azula, that’s fine, but I’m not going to let you gaslight me into coming home. Find something worthwhile to say to me or stop calling.”

Before he could lose his resolve, he hung up, turning his phone off in the process, and got into bed. He needed to sleep, and he didn’t need a half-dozen calls from his very-traumatized and still-in-denial sister to pull him out of it.

Turns out, it wasn’t that easy for Zuko. Nothing in his life ever had been.

His dreams were filled with fire, too warm and bright, flickering behind his lids. He heard his mother’s frantic yelling, the words unintelligible, but he recognized the desperation in her voice, would remember it for the rest of his life. Her pleas with his father to stop rang through his head, echoing in his dreams, but it was too late, the flash of hot metal searing the side of his face. He reached up, clutching his face, palms pressed to his eyes.

Someone was screaming. He didn’t know it was him until he felt himself being shaken awake.

Cool hands were on his wrists, pulling his hands away from his face, and he fought the touch at first, until the coolness of it broke through his dreams. There was no coldness that day, no soothing touch, and somehow that registered in his mind even before the voice broke through.

“Zuko! Zuko, wake up! You’re dreaming,” he heard.

His eyes flew open, and he gasped raggedly, shooting up in bed. His pulse was racing, and he could feel cold sweat on his chest, tears running down his cheeks. The hands that were on his wrist released him, and the lamp beside his bed was flicked on to reveal Katara on the edge of his bed, eyes wide with concern.

“Shh, it’s okay. You’re safe,” she whispered soothingly, her hands falling to his shoulders, steadying him, grounding him on the bed. 

He flushed when he remembered he was shirtless, but he didn’t shrug away. He didn’t think he could. Her hands, her eyes staring deep into his, were the only things holding him to this plane right now.

“Hi,” she murmured, giving him the smallest, kindest smile. Her legs were curled beneath her, and her hair was messy and flowing down her shoulders. “Are you okay? Well, that’s stupid, I know you’re not okay, but...who am I?”

“Um, Katara?” Was this a trick question?

“Where are you?”

“My room, in our apartment?” 

“Good, yes.” Katara nodded. “What year is this?”

“2020. It sucks.” Then Zuko’s eyes widened as he realized what she was doing. He’d been through enough therapy to know, and he was surprised he didn’t think of it himself.

“Okay, good. So if it’s 2020 and you’re in our apartment…”

“I’m not there,” he whispered. It was impossible to look away from her eyes, like they were not the ocean but the rock he clung to in the middle of it, riding out the storm. “I...Thank you, Katara.”

She gave him a sad half-smile, l. “You’re welcome. I use that sometimes, when I have nightmares.”

“You...you get them too?”

Katara nodded, and she squeezed his shoulders. Maybe he imagined it, but she seemed reluctant to pull away, even though she did slowly. “I was...I was there when my mom died. Sometimes I see it in my dreams, or if I see something that reminds me of that day. So I do that to remind myself that I’m not there and I’m...I’m safe, you know?” 

Zuko swallowed, nodding. “This happens sometimes,” he admitted. “Whenever I…I…”

He trailed off because how can you explain that your own father disfigured you in a fit of rage because he wanted the world to see the way he did: flawed, ugly, _worthless_?

Katara didn’t press, but she did say, “You talked to your sister today, didn’t you?”

He winced. “You heard that?”

She smiled sadly. “The walls aren’t exactly thick. I don’t know what she said exactly, but…it must have really affected you.” 

Zuko was tired, and he didn’t know how much of this she could handle, so he tested the waters. “She...we didn’t have the best childhood, obviously.”

“That’s putting it lightly,” she joked a bit, a corner of her lip pulling up.

He chuckled. “Yeah, I know. But I, well...you know how big of a jerk I was when we met. I wasn’t dealing with my shit, and it was eating me from the inside out. But I got out from under my dad’s thumb, and I was able to get better. Azula...she’s still stuck under it, and she doesn’t realize she’s stuck.” 

A lump formed in his throat at that. “I don’t know how to get her out, and every time we talk...she reminds me of everything that happened, of my dad, and—and my scar. I don’t know if it’s worth the effort, to try and help someone that doesn’t want to be helped.”

Katara hummed thoughtfully, tilting her head to the side in thought. “I don’t know everything that happened between you two, or everything that happened with your dad. I hope one day you’ll feel like you can tell me, but I understand having trauma that you can’t talk about.”

“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.” 

Zuko didn’t know where he got the courage to say that, but it worked. Katara laughed and said, “Sure, but that’s a conversation that shouldn’t happen at four in the morning, unless you want to wake up again in two hours and comfort me from a nightmare.”

Zuko shrugged. “Well, fair’s fair.”

She shook her head, smiling ruefully. “Anyway...I don’t know what your relationship with your sister was like, but I know that if it were me and Sokka, I wouldn’t want him to give up, no matter how many times I told him to. I was really mean to Sokka during my high school years, when I missed Mom and I had no one to turn to about it. I even told him he must not have loved her like I did if he could get over it so easily.”

Her eyes were misty at that, and he couldn’t help but reach out and take her hand. She smiled gratefully and gave his hand a squeeze. “But he wasn’t over it. He was just better at adapting to the grief because he had to be, to be the older brother that I needed. I think...it won’t be easy to help your sister. She might not even know she wants it right now, but eventually she will, and I think you’ll want to be there when it happens.”

Her eyes were soft, and he murmured, “Sokka’s really lucky, to have a sister like you.”

“And Azula is lucky to have a big brother like you.” She gripped his hand tightly, smoothing circles over the back with her thumb, and he let himself languish in the cool comfort of her touch. 

“I...I’ve kept you up. You should go to bed. I’ll be fine, really.” He didn’t want to keep her up, and he was mildly embarrassed about this, even though she probably wouldn’t want him to be.

Katara searched his face, and whatever she found there must have told her he was good to be left alone because she squeezed his hand and let go. He tried to tell himself he didn’t miss it. “Okay, but if it happens again...will you come talk to me?”

“If it happens for you, will you come talk to me? I don’t want to be the only one who’s a mess in this house.”

Katara laughed, standing up and giving him a coy shrug. “Fair’s fair, right? I have to warn you, caring about me is a bigger hazard than you realize. Are you sure you’re ready for that?”

Even if he wasn’t, he really wanted to be, so he said, “You don’t scare me, Kuruk. No matter how scary you think you are.”

It was a blatant lie, and she knew that, judging by the feral smile she gave him. “Don’t challenge me, Rokura. I don’t back down.”

“Don’t threaten me with a good time.” He smirked. This banter was their comfort zone, miles away from the emotions they’d laid bare just a few minutes ago. _This_ , he knew how to handle. 

Everything else, well, they’d figure it out—together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's all for today, folks! I also wanted to let y'all know I'm done with the bulk of my work for my day job, so I promise there will be longer/more frequent updates coming your way, plus a two-shot that I'm really excited for coming in the near future. 
> 
> Please let me know what you think of this. Comments and kudos are glitter and sugar and spice and everything nice, so please leave them if you'd like. They mean the world to me. 
> 
> I love you all! <3


	7. you're the only one who knows the way i really feel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Drunktara is a cuddler, and Zuko has abandonment issues.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm early this week! I had a couple days off from work, so I cranked this out in between reruns of Masterchef and laying on my couch complaining about how tired I am.
> 
> Still working on the two-shot, so I'll let you know when to expect that! In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the chapter, and I'll see you in the comments if you'd be so kind as to leave them. :)
> 
> As a reminder, I don’t own ATLA, this Charli XCX song, or the Richard Siken poems I reference.

so calm at the surface,  
i'm scared of nothin'.  
underneath, i'm nervous.  
can you reach me?

—charli xcx, "enemy"

**DAY 11**

“Did you know there are murder hornets now?”

Katara looked over the top of her laptop as Zuko plopped down on the love seat, looking at his phone. His hair was wet from his post-shift shower and hanging in his eyes, and Katara was possessed by the sudden urge to push it out of his face. She was glad he did it himself so she wouldn’t do something stupid, even if she was left wondering how soft the strands were. “You mean buzzard wasps?”

“No, I mean hornets.”

“Just hornets?” Katara paused in her virtual highlighting to raise an eyebrow at him.

“Just hornets. Murder hornets.” Zuko grimaced and held the phone out to her. “Big ones.”

The hornet on the screen was, indeed, ginormous and scary-looking. Katara groaned, pushing the phone away in disgust. “What is even the problem with this year?”

Zuko shook his head. “It’s nature’s way of trying to fight coronavirus. Trying to force us inside under threat of being murdered by weird hornets.”

Katara huffed and shut her laptop. “Virus, murder hornets, I can’t take any more of this. My brain is fried.”

She flopped backward on the couch, and Zuko sank into the cushions of the loveseat. “I have eight ten-page papers to go over for workshop on Monday and I don’t want to do any of them.”

“How’s your O-chem? I’ll grade your papers if you do my problem set.” Katara’s head rolled over on the pillow to look at him. 

He tipped his head back so his gaze met hers. “As appealing as that sounds, I don’t think you want my subpar math skills.” He sighed. “How is anyone supposed to concentrate in a pandemic?”

“Right? It feels like my professors have given us even more homework now that outside is closed.” Katara peered at his phone, open to the coronavirus bar graph on Google. “Well, maybe if you didn’t have the COVID counter open in a tab all the time, you’d only mildly stress yourself out instead of severely.”

He glared at her upside-down. “Don’t think I don’t see you checking the coronavirus news every day. You’re just as anxious as I am.”

Katara sighed. “Okay, yeah, you’re right. I just...I don’t see how the quarantine can possibly lift after two weeks, and even if it does, I’m not going anywhere.”

“Same.” Zuko groaned suddenly. “And no one seems to be taking this seriously. I already have to kick groups of people out who try to crowd into the shop, even though we’ve even taken the tables and chairs out. If the kingdom opens again, the Jasmine Dragon will be crawling with those selfish idiots.”

A spike of fear shot up Katara’s spine. “So basically you’re saying we’re fucked. You, me, your uncle, fucked,” she said numbly.

Zuko grimaced. “I’m sorry.”

Katara shook her head quickly. “No, stop. As much as it pains me to admit it, I’m glad it’s you here and not anyone else.” At his smile, she added, “Not that I like you or anything.”

“You said it, not me,” he pointed out, grinning..

“I—that’s not—ugh, why are you so infuriating? How do your students stand you? Please tell me you don’t needle them as much as me.” She stuck her tongue out at him.

Zuko chuckled. “I hope so. I’ve talked Piandao out of as many extra assignments as possible, and I got him to assign _The Lion King_ as extra credit viewing for our _Hamlet_ unit, so maybe they like me.”

“That sounds so fun,” Katara whined, pouting at him. “Why aren’t you my TA?”

Zuko shrugged, smiling. “Audit my class, but I admit, I’ll probably be harder on you than the others.”

Katara smirked. “Why, because you admit I’m smart and already know what I’m talking about?” 

His grin turned sly, and he said, “That, and it’s fun to mess with you.”

“Don’t try me, pretty boy—”

“So you think I’m pretty?”

Katara rolled her eyes, trying to calm the flush she could feel creeping up her neck. “Mostly, I think you’re infuriating.”

His eyes gleamed triumphantly. “That wasn’t a no.” 

Katara wasn’t going to explore this line of conversation further. His eyes were glinting, and her stomach was lifting like it was full of soda bubbles, so she blamed it on hunger even though she knew that wasn’t what it was. “Put that smart mouth to something better and tell me what you want for dinner.”

Zuko hummed. “We have leftover spaghetti for days, and we have Impossible beef we can use, and—”

Both their phones pinged at the same time, and they froze. The last time they’d gotten notifications at the same time…

“I can look first,” Zuko offered. 

Katara shook her head. “I can’t let you go through that alone.” She picked up her phone and said, “On three. One...”

Zuko nodded. “Two..”

“Three.” They unlocked their phones, and Katara zeroed in on the News notification. 

_The two-week lockdown hasn’t flattened the curve. By order of the Earth King and the Dai Li, the quarantine has been extended to no sooner than three months from this Monday. We will continue to monitor the situation and let you know no later than 120 days before the re-opening date if the lockdown will be extended._

“And there it is,” Zuko murmured.

“Well, that answers that question.” Katara sighed and said, “I take it you don’t have any plans tomorrow?”

Zuko shrugged. “Work in the morning, but since it’s Saturday, the shop opens at nine instead of seven, and I don’t have office hours or anything, so no?”

“Great. You wanna get takeout and watch _The Lion King_?”

Zuko smiled. “Chinese okay? I need some comfort food.”

“An appreciation for eating our feelings. This could be the beginning of a beautiful quarantine friendship, Rokura.”

“You going to toss me to the curb after lockdown?” 

Zuko’s smile was joking, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes, and Katara remembered that she wasn’t the only one here with abandonment issues. 

So she smiled at him and reached out to brush her hand against his hair. She told herself it was for his benefit, but she felt herself shiver at it nonetheless. It was even softer than it looked. “Believe it or not, I actually like having you around, so I wouldn’t hate it if you could stay awhile.”

Zuko looked a little stunned at her admission but leaned into her hand, giving her a grateful smile. “I wouldn’t hate it either, just so we’re clear.”

“Crystal.” His golden eyes were unexpectedly intense on hers, and she didn’t want to stop looking at them, so that was how she knew she had to. She pulled her hand away from him (reluctantly) and looked down at her phone. “So which Chinese place should we order from?”

After they’d placed the order for an exuberant amount of food, Zuko went to his room to get some dissertation work done, and Katara padded around the kitchen getting out plates and silverware. Yanking open the fridge to look for the soy sauce, she caught sight of the five bottles of wine she’d impulse-over-ordered on Drizly after they’d gotten back from the grocery store, and an idea bloomed in her head.

It might be a bad one, but she hadn’t had a drink in weeks, and a global pandemic felt like the right occasion. Maybe a little liquid bonding and the ensuing word vomit was what she and Zuko needed to cement their quarantine-inspired friendship, but this could go very, very poorly if she wasn’t careful. 

Katara had always been a touchy person, and she got even more needy when drunk, earning herself the reputation as the drunk cuddler in their little gang. She’d seen how cautious he was about touch, and the last thing she wanted was to cross any boundaries.

She needed to ask Suki about this.

KATARA: on a scale of one to ten, how awkward do i make things when drunk?

SUKI: um  
SUKI: i mean like 1 for me bc you’re my best friend and i’m used to you playing grabass when you’ve had too much to drink  
SUKI: for like literally everyone else, probably an 11

Katara groaned. Of course.

KATARA: oh spirits  
KATARA: i want to drink tonight but i don’t want to traumatize Zuko

SUKI: wait but drunktara is the BEST  
SUKI: Koh knows that boy needs cuddles  
SUKI: he’s so sad

KATARA: you’re not wrong  
KATARA: but it’s ZUKO

SUKI: and?? aren’t you good now?

KATARA: well, yeah, but still  
KATARA: what if i say something weird and completely freak him out  
KATARA: and then we have to be stuck in together in quarantine w/ him hating me

SUKI: katara you’re like a cartoon character when you’re drunk  
SUKI: he’s not going to hate you if you gush about how good of a friend he is  
SUKI: and how much you like his face

KATARA: that happened ONE TIME  
KATARA: you’re never going to let that go, are you?

SUKI: it was the “your boyfriend is built like a bitch you should be my girlfriend instead” that really got me

KATARA: if you weren’t my best friend, i’d kick your ass

SUKI: ooo you promise? ;)

KATARA: UGH SUKI  
KATARA: What if i say something like that now?

SUKI: well  
SUKI: do you think he’s a good friend  
SUKI: and DO you like his face? *side eye emoji*

KATARA: …  
KATARA: what if i do  
KATARA: on both counts

And that’s exactly why Katara didn’t want to. She wasn’t really sure about anything with Zuko right now—only the fact that she wanted to be his friend, wanted to get to know him better, and wanted to spend some more time drawing out the smiles that had been appearing more and more since they’d buried the hatchet. She didn’t want to risk this delicate thing they were building for a glass of rosé.

SUKI: you’ll be fine  
SUKI: just don’t get hammered  
SUKI: that’s when you start taking off your clothes  
SUKI: unless that’s what you want, of course ;)

KATARA: i hate you so much rn

SUKI: love you too, babe

Katara scoffed and set her phone down, staring down at the bottle of pink temptation. Gathering her resolve, she grabbed two wine glasses. Maybe she wouldn’t be the only one being an awkward, tipsy mess tonight.

She’d seen who he was when he was comfortable, and she couldn’t help but wonder, with a fierce curiosity, who he was when he wasn’t trying so hard to control himself. 

“Why do we have Disney+?” Zuko asked suddenly, and she looked up to see him in the living room, flipping through the app.

“Toph. Her parents still think she’s six, but she also loves the _Cars_ franchise and cries every time she watches them. She’ll deny it if asked, so I keep my comments to myself for the sake of self-preservation.” Katara swallowed and, working up her courage, held up the bottle. “You in?”

Zuko looked at the bottle and then at her and grinned. “You want to party with me, princess?”

Katara cocked her hip and made a face. “The invitation is about to be rescinded, you ass.”

Zuko shook his head, smiling. “Sure, Katara. Let’s do it.”

After dinner, they settled in the living room with the last of the bottle and started _The Lion King_. 

“Okay, wait a second, walk that back for me,” Zuko said, squinting at her over the rim of his wine glass.

“What’s so hard to understand? If you watched this as a kid and had mommy issues, you had a crush on Nala, and if you had daddy issues, you liked Scar. It’s practically science.” Katara shrugged her shoulders and raised the glass to her lips, hiding a smile. "Be Prepared" had started her on a rant, and he'd just watched her with something akin to fascination on his face as she rambled, so now she was very intrigued as to what he thought.

“And if you had both?” Zuko’s lips twitched.

“You liked both and you ended up bisexual _and_ mentally ill.” 

Zuko barked out a laugh. “One day I’m going to write a paper on how your sexuality is determined by which parent fucked you up as a child.”

Katara laughed and admitted, “Sounds about right. I have both mommy and daddy issues, so that adds up, I guess.”

“Me too. We’re two sides of the same fucked up coin.” Zuko shook his head and took a drink.

If anyone asked, she’d blame it on the alcohol, but ultimately it was her curiosity (she swore that was all, really) that made her ask, “So which one was it with Jet?”

Zuko choked into his glass. “Excuse me?” He wheezed.

Katara grinned. She hadn’t expected that severe of a reaction, and now she was fascinated. “Which was it, mommy or daddy issues, that led you to make the mistake of Jet?”

Zuko was a little flushed, but he still managed to level her with a look. “Which was it for you?”

Katara twirled the wine around in her glass, staring down into its depths. Jet was...he was a welcome change at the time. She and Aang had dated in high school, when she’d needed some comfort and stability after moving to Ba Sing Se, and the fact that he was younger and needed her in a lot of ways was a familiar dynamic that she knew how to navigate.

But then it became too familiar, and she started to want more than just to be someone’s cheerleader and emotional support girlfriend. Hence, their breakup, and her relationship with Jet beginning a year later, which was different and much, much worse in her opinion.

She decided to start with, “He had dead parents, I had a dead mom and an absent dad. So maybe it was a little of both, since I didn’t have a mom to tell me he was bad news and I thought he was...rugged and aggressive enough to replace that kind of fatherly protection, I guess? As Oedipal as that sounds.” She grimaced. 

Zuko nodded. “So dead mom bonding and that void of paternal energy. Great combination for a Jet takeover.”

“I made a series of questionable decisions after Aang and I broke up in high school.” She ignored his questioning eyebrow because she _really_ didn’t want to go into that right now. “So seriously, why Jet?”

Zuko cringed. “Definitely daddy issues for sure. He hated my family for what the Fire Nation did to his, and I hated my family too, so...match made in toxic heaven. We dated for a couple months a year ago, when I was in the thick of… some stuff. It was a good distraction, I guess, until it caused more problems than not.”

Katara noticed him rubbing his wrist a bit, the sadness in his eyes, and decided to catalogue that away as something to ask about later. That was a whiskey conversation, not a rosé one.

“Oh right, he really hated the Fire Nation. He really was into that whole anarchy thing for way too long, too.” She grimaced. “It was cool until it wasn’t anymore. And I hated that Juul. Did he still have it when you dated him?”

“Yeah, performative rage that ultimately helps no one really isn’t my style anymore. And Agni, _yes_. ” Zuko groaned, tipping his head back to the ceiling. “That Juul was the fucking worst. Only he could make a vape smell as bad as an actual cigarette.” 

“Truly. I always came out of his place smelling like smoke still. I don’t know how I put up with it for so long.”

Zuko tipped his head, smiling sadly. “Because being loved badly is better than not being loved at all. At least in my case.”

Katara had to agree with that. When she first got to BSSU, she’d wanted someone to love her, the real her, with all her flaws and sadness and all-consuming rage, and she couldn’t find, not in any of her (failed) relationships. “I wanted someone to love me because I didn’t really love myself all that much,” she whispered, taking another sip of her wine. 

Zuko nodded, eyes lit in understanding. His half-smile was small and heartbreakingly sad. “I wanted someone to hurt me as much as I wanted to hurt myself. And isn’t that what all love comes down to? A reflection of the way you feel about yourself.”

“That sounds right, but you’re the lit major. You tell me.”

Zuko drained his glass, clearing his throat and looking her in the eyes. “ _I couldn’t get the boy to kill me, but I wore his jacket for the longest time_.”

Katara couldn’t help but stare, follow his pretty lips as they formed the words that she, too, had once memorized. Richard Siken had always reflected the violent sadness in her, and looking at Zuko, with his calloused hands and smile that was always just a little bit sad, she wondered how she could’ve ever missed that he held the same misery inside of him. “ _Love, for you, is larger than the usual romantic love. It’s like a religion. It’s terrifying. No one will ever want to sleep with you._ ”

She knew what the next words were, but she didn’t expect the way his eyes burned into hers, molten gold, as he said them. “ _Okay, if you’re so great, you do it_.”

The gravity of his gaze felt like it was pulling her into a vortex, a whirlpool of feelings she had no words for and didn’t want to find because this was all so heavy and terrifying and she didn’t want to look at it right now, so she just said, “I think we need another bottle.”

It was quickly turning into a poetry and cab sav kind of night, and it was her and Zuko after all, so she couldn’t even trick herself into feeling surprised.

She could only feel grateful, that she didn’t have to hide that she was sad.

+++

Zuko was surprised it only took them half of the next bottle to start making a fool of themselves.

“ _Mi pan, su su sum, su su su_ —so it’s like that and we do it fast and we do it together. Got it?” Katara said, demonstrating the dance move she had been trying to teach Zuko for the last thirty minutes.

Zuko really had been trying to learn, but his center of gravity had never been the steadiest. He tripped back into a corner of the couch in his haste to mimic the movement, and Katara laughed, stumbling into the coffee table as he collided with her. His skin sparked electric when it touched hers, and the shock of it made him latch onto the couch for dear life. “Okay, maybe this isn’t the best idea right now.”

Zuko flopped onto the couch. “I think you’re probably right about that.”

His chest was heaving beneath his shirt, and he couldn’t help but notice that Katara’s eyes flashed as she looked down at it before flicking up at him, her face neutral again. “I have good ideas sometimes.”

“Was this one of them?”

Katara smiled ruefully. “Maybe not.” She pulled the fabric of her sweatpants away from her body and grimaced. “I’m hot. I’m gonna go change.” 

Then she turned, walking just a little unsteadily, and he knew she was more tipsy than she’d intended because she had pulled off her shirt because she’d even left the living room, hips swaying slightly.

Zuko couldn’t take his eyes off her back as she walked away, all that smooth skin on display, and he blamed the alcohol for why he let his gaze linger until her hands went to her pretty lavender bra, groping for the clasp.

He flopped back on the couch, forcing his eyes to the ceiling and trying to get his pulse under control, his breathing suddenly shallow.

Phone. He needed his phone as a distraction, and it was charging in his room. His mission: make it there without objectifying his roommate, who was quickly becoming one of the most important parts of his existence at the moment, and he didn’t want anything to jeopardize that because his drunk self couldn’t stop seeing what he’d just seen.

He ducked down the hallway, making sure to keep his eyes down as he passed her room, since the door was wide open. He breathed a sigh of relief when he got to his room, sinking down on his bed. He had text messages from Mai and also from Azula, so he ignored his sister’s in favor of the person who he’d grown up with almost as long.

MAI: Are you dead?

ZUKO: Only inside, like the rest of the world.  
ZUKO: How are you?

MAI: Bored as always, but not more than usual.  
MAI: Glad to not have to face the masses, but Ty Lee is not having it.  
MAI: She keeps talking about her aura getting dimmer because she can’t go to aerial yoga.

ZUKO: So it’s a dusky pink instead of bubblegum.

MAI: Exactly.  
MAI: It’s fine. We’ll deal.  
MAI: How’s the new place? Is the water tribe girl still bothering you?

ZUKO: Her name is katara  
ZUKO: You also sound vaguely racist by the way.

MAI: ...You’re right. Sorry. Being stuck in the Fire Nation might be rubbing off on me.

Zuko grimaced. He knew that awful feeling all too well, hence why he never visited Caldera City unless absolutely necessary.

ZUKO: I’ve been there. I get it.

MAI: so Katara  
MAI: I take it you haven’t murdered each other?

ZUKO: We’re both still breathing and have no plans to commit un-alive for ourselves or each other, as far as I can tell.

MAI: Ah  
MAI: So have you accidentally slept together yet then?

Zuko blanched, and the quiet knock at the door was well-timed because he didn’t know how to answer Mai without a string of awkward spluttering. Katara stood in the doorway, bouncing on the balls of her feet and holding out her phone. “You have to see Rangi and Kyoshi’s TikToks.”

She didn’t make a move to enter though, and Zuko realized she was standing right outside the door, not crossing the threshold. Even slightly glassy from alcohol, her eyes were questioning and hesitant, and it made him smile that she wasn’t going to invade his personal space without him inviting her in. So he said, “Show me.”

Her beaming smile lit up the room as she came in, and he eyed her black camisole and light blue shorts, leaving very little to the imagination. He kept his eyes trained on her face as she sat down beside him on the bed, her shorts riding up on her thighs, and showed him the phone.

Zuko grinned as he watched Kyoshi stay in Horse stance while Rangi circled around her, correcting her form with jabs and light touches alike while Kyoshi shook and tried not to crack a smile. “Look at how red Kyoshi is. She’s _living_ for this.”

“I know, right? It’s so _gay_.” Katara laid back on the bed heavily, poking his back. “They have more.”

Zuko lay back, suppressing a smile at the way she scootched closer, pressing her cheek to his shoulder. “Didn’t take you for a drunk cuddler.”

“I am. One of my not-so-good traits,” she murmured, and he shivered at the wash of her breath against his neck, warm and smelling of sweet red wine.

“I wouldn’t say not so good,” he let himself murmur, pressing his arm against hers. 

“Is this okay?” Katara’s whisper was apprehensive, and he looked down to see her gazing up at him through her long lashes, biting her lip. 

He found himself nodding, pressing in closer still. He hadn’t really been hugged as a kid, and rarely ever after his mom had left the palace. Mai hadn’t been much of a cuddler either when they were dating, and he never thought he was into it either, He rarely got close enough to anyone to let them hug him. Iroh had been the only one who had ever given him consistent hugs.

As Katara laid her head on his shoulder, he let himself press his cheek to her hair, her scent of ocean water and water lilies filling his nose. He couldn’t help but wonder what it would feel like to be surrounded by it, wrapped in her as she hugged him. For all her cool skin, he bet she’d feel warm nonetheless. He hadn't realized how much he enjoyed the touch of another person until now.

“I haven’t really been this close to anyone in a long time,” she murmured. 

A sudden pang of panic and hurt surged through Zuko’s chest, and he let it take over him for a moment. He had to know, “Are you...are you just lonely? And that’s why you asked me to hang out? Because I’m the only one here.”

He couldn’t just be her pandemic support system. He wanted to be her friend, pure and simple, who she just happened to get close to during a pandemic and would continue to be close to after. He didn’t want this thing between them to be temporary. He had enough abandonment issues in his past and too fragile a grasp on his will to live that he'd definitely cry if she turned out to not care about him the way he did about her. 

Especially since he was starting to care very, _very_ deeply about her.

It felt like the longest few seconds before she answered, “I worried about that too, that maybe I’d let you walk all over me because I was lonely, like I did with Jet or Jiang, but...Zuko, you have your own special thing, you know?”

He smiled a bit at how her brow was scrunched-up, like she was searching for words in her brain but failing. “Say more.”

Katara’s eyes narrowed in thought. “It’s like...it’s like something inside of you is the same as something inside of me. Like, like twin flames or something. We’re made of the same stuff.”

“Maybe our stars were next to each other in the universe.” Zuko paused. “Wait, is that corny?”

Katara shook her head vehemently. “No, that’s exactly what I meant. You make me feel like the sad stuff that’s inside of me is okay because you feel it too.”

No one had ever described the sad things inside of him as being okay. He decided to say so. “No one has ever...I’ve never heard of that being a good thing. Mai and Jet...it was like I was too much to handle.”

Katara smiled. “I’ve always been told the same thing. Too many emotions, no control. But maybe they, and my exes, and your exes...maybe they just weren’t enough to handle it all. And that’s not our fault.”

“Am I...am I enough?” A lump formed in his throat, and he tried to swallow it down. Even though he was drunk enough to say these things, he still felt a bolt of shame at how small and needy his voice sounded.

Katara rolled, with some clumsiness, onto her left side to face him. He followed her, not wanting to lose sight of her, and her eyes were narrow, blazing blue fire, even with her cheek obscured by his comforter. “Of course you are. Zuko, you’re more than enough. You read poetry and you respect kids’ books and you love so many things and know so many things. Don’t you dare think you’re not enough. You’re more than enough. You’re the entire _sun_ , with all the life you have inside you.”

He couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe with the honesty he heard in her voice, the way the words rang clear and fierce in the room even through the haze of drinks they’d had. He wondered when she’d sobered up enough to be that poetic, but then he remembered you could be drunk on emotion too, and he wasn’t surprised.

Katara’s eyes flicked over his face when he didn’t respond, and she brought her hand up. “Can I…” 

She gestured to his scar, and he was a bit stunned when he heard himself say, almost unconsciously, “Yeah, that’s...that’s fine.”

He’d never let anyone touch his scar, except for Iroh since he’d been there right after it happened, not even Mai or Jet. But he held still while she cupped it, her touch cool. He let himself lean into her palm, and her face brightened at that.

“Are you...are you just being nice to me because we’re in a pandemic and you don’t have anyone else here?” Her voice was tiny too, and she bit her lip.

This one was easy for him to respond to. “Katara, I...I never really had anyone to begin with. Uncle, and Toph, and Mai sometimes, but...they never really got the emotional things. I didn’t try to tell them because I—I didn’t think I needed it. But with you, it—it feels easy, and—I think I want it.”

Her lips twitched. “It?” He was sure he wasn’t making any sense, but she didn’t seem confused, just curious.

“Want that. This. The emotional things.” He gestured between them. “Whatever we’ve been doing. Whatever we’re going to do. You’re real, and you make me feel real, and...Maybe you understand?”

She squeezed his cheek, smiling with all her teeth and she swept her thumb over his scarred skin. He hadn’t anything so soothing in years, maybe even lifetimes. “With this, and you, and talking to you...I feel like a whole, with all my broken parts. So are you… you’re not going to go back to hating me whenever this is all over, right?”

He wasn’t entirely sure this pandemic would ever be all over, but he knew one thing for certain: he would never be the same now that he’d seen the mosaic that made up Katara, the sea glass reflecting all her best and worst qualities, and he wasn’t going to look away now. “As long as you’ll let me, I want to be here, with you, in your life.”

Her smile was small and warm, an ember instead of a bonfire, and her eyes were boring into his, refusing to let him believe anything but the truth of her words. “Good. Because I want you here too. For a long time. Maybe all the time.”

“Well, lucky for us, we have nothing but time,” he murmured, reaching up and catching her wrist, stroking it tentatively. 

She laughed a bit, moving her hand down to his neck and his shoulder before picking up her phone. “Well, let’s begin with some TikToks, okay? It’s your turn to show me your algorithm.”

Zuko smirked and pulled out his phone. He’d shown her enough of his trauma and his self-consciousness for tonight. The privacy of his TikTok feed felt like a small price to pay for the joy he felt at her laughter as they watched together, her giggles floating up to the ceiling like bubbles under the surface of the ocean, and he felt his hopes lift with them.

It was hours past his usual bedtime when a sobered-up Katara went back to her room, leaving him with a wave and a sleepy smile. As Zuko watched her leave with a throaty “see you in the morning,” he didn’t even care that he would probably be a little hungover for his morning shift. It was worth it to watch her leave with messy hair, flushed cheeks, and pajamas twisted around her body from rolling around on his bed giggling.

Zuko couldn’t help but wonder when he’d get to see that again—and when the girl who had hated him for so long had become comfortable enough to let him see her like that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There it is! Next week's update: the Gaang discovers Animal Crossing!
> 
> Please keep leaving your amazing comments for me! Constructive feedback and kudos are FUEL. I love y'all and see you next week! <3

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed this! Let me know what you think, if you loved it or hated it. Kudos and feedback is fuel, so please express yourselves! I'll try to have the next update up in a week or so. Love y'all! :)


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